The Ending of Relationships | Ajahn Brahm

The Ending Of Relationships by Ajahn Brahm

[NOTE: AI generated transcription – expect errors.]

Okay, here we go. This evening's talk has been suggested, quite coincidentally, by two people. I was past an email from Canada who asking for a topic for a talk, and someone also came up to me and asked for exactly the same topic. Which is quite a coincidence. Especially the topic has been something which I've never really focused on before, but it's an important topic because it occurs in people's lives, in modern lives. It's all about the ending of relationships and about what's the right time, how to do it, or should one do it, and all of the ways that we can, uh, go through this time of a relationship ending and be able to use the opportunities skillfully for growth, for peace, for happiness, at least minimizing the pain So today's talk is about ending of relationships. And I am warming to that theme simply because Buddhism is not just some sort of series, not just something which is practice in monasteries. It's not just some which you do on a meditation cushion. It's something which should give you guidelines to what happens in life. And unfortunately, some people you know will have a relationship and sometimes the relationship starts to become weak. You want to know what should be done. Is it repairable or should one just call it a day and how to call it a day in the most skillful, most compassionate way for everyone involved? But before I start, I'd like to also emphasize that there's a theme which runs through this talk as a theme, which I've been talking about quite a lot in the last couple of weeks. And that theme is just the way that we make decisions, because when it comes down to it, there one is in a relationship. One has to make a decision about whether to continue, whether to keep going. And I think I mentioned it could have been a nice week, but please excuse me, because in the last week I don't know how many Dharma talks I've given simply because I've been over in Sydney as soon as I left here on a Friday and then over to Sydney and giving heaps and heaps of talks, it seems every day there's 2 or 3 talks. I'm not quite sure when I said what and how and to whom, but nevertheless, there's a very powerful teaching in Buddhism about how to make decisions, or rather, how not to make them, to make sure that one is never acting out of four things. And those four things are never acting out of desire, out of ill will, out of stupidity and out of fear. And when we talk about those four things, when it comes to ending a relationship, so often those four things are all very active, which makes the decision making process usually one which creates more pain and difficulty in our life than the life of others. So if you are in a situation where this might be happening, this checklist for things like a checklist, first of all, if I'm going to make a decision, where is that decision coming from? In particular, I'm going to go to the fourth factor. First of all, fear, because too often it is the fear which is the dominant force, which makes us either withhold a decision which needs to be made, or which bends the decisions just to out of fear. What really fear is, is this we are afraid of the consequences we are afraid of. Other people will say, and sometimes just afraid of doing anything. And of course, in our life, when we have that fear, it means that we are being wise, we are being constructive. We can be compassionate. It is a fear which actually makes many decisions go in the wrong direction. So when there is a relationship there. Are you afraid of staying? Are you afraid of breaking up? One of the things you should know that people, sometimes they say, sometimes they break up. But it's never as bad as people really imagine it would be. It is fear which exaggerates the situation and makes the consequences appear almost unendurable, which blows them up out of all proportion. We're giving you many stories about what fear is. And sometimes if you go to a dentist and they say, I'm sorry, but this is going to hurt, it's going to really hurt. It's going to terribly hurt. And of course, it will hurt even more. A good doctor, a good dentist will say it's not going to have a match. It's just a little prick that sort of is are. And so why do you tell me that? Because if I told you it, it would make you feel worse. So often it is a fear which exaggerates the pain. This is why I remember once when I was in hospital, I was in a ward with three other men. Even though I was a monk. Was in the men's ward. Is fascinating because it was as if nothing was in Rockingham Hospital many years ago and in my ward, first of all, when I arrived at a series of tests. They said, where are your pajamas? And I said, I haven't got any pajamas, but I don't. Old pajamas. And they said, you have to pick your pajamas. And I said, it's either these robes or nothing. Take your pick. And I just said, in that case, we'll have your lives. So all my robes in the world. And I remember one day, because there was a war, there was a girls war next door. And one of the girls walked past on the way. No. So I walked past on the way to the toilet and one of the girls actually screamed. She thought it was one of her friends spooking her, she said afterwards. And so I made sure that next time they put me in a ward, it's not close to the cardiac ward. Otherwise I might. But but anyway, in this room with three other men, as always happens, you're in there all day, all night, and so you talk to each other. And of course, I want to know what it's like to be a monk. I want to know what they were doing And as conversations go, sometimes you start talking about stupid things. So what we started talking about. Was the worst medical procedure. And some of these guys have been in the hospital in an hour. And somebody said, oh, you know, testing your liver or something, testing this. And then one guy said, look, I've been in the hospital. The worst thing is a barium enema. So that's terrible. Oh, it's so painful. And this guy in the corner bed went, why? I never got barely made it by this afternoon. But this stupid thing to talk to you about. So we all laughed. That poor fella. I don't know if he was laughing because he had to. Barium enema in the afternoon if it's a worse thing. But the point is, if he kept talking like that, it does become the worst thing is fear exaggerates the pain and negativity whatever we experience in life. So first of all, make sure there's no fear when you start contemplating. Know the end of a relationship because you find you do get through these things. And if you are wise, you can get through these things in a good way, in a way where you learn and grow and become better as a result. The breaking up of a relationship does not have to be a negative. This is something which I keep on saying here on a Friday night, that nothing in life needs to be looked upon in a negative way. As we say, the law of karma, the law of karma, the ingredients you have to work with in your life, whether it's a relationship which is failing or a good relationship which is blossoming, whether it's a life, whether it's a death, whether it's richness, whether it's poverty, whatever you have to deal with in life, that's the karmic ingredients you have to work with. But the most important part of karma is what you do with those ingredients. And it's how we deal with what we have is the most important part. And given many times the story of two ladies baking a cake, one's got terrible ingredients, one's got really good ingredients. I won't go in detail in that story. Who makes the best cake? The one with the best ingredients or the one with the worst ingredients? If you know whenever you're cooking, the ingredients are only a part. The small part usually of the deliciousness of the meal. It's what you do with it is more important how you mix those things together. The effort, the care, the skill which you put in to baking a cake or making a meal is what makes it delicious. In the same way, a lot of times it doesn't matter what you experience in life and what life gives you the karmic results of your past, there you have the ingredients of your present moment. How are you using that? So we don't use fear because we know that whatever happens to us in life, we can make use of it. I don't think this is a go because I will leave. Anonymous. She was saying to me just a few moments ago that she had been attacked by a man a couple of years ago. So I was thinking of maybe telling her friends relations. I told her to put a positive spin on this. The positive spin is that the old story about treading in the dog poo. You tread in a dog poo in life sometimes, that the dog poo is the ingredients you have to work with. Sometimes the relationship can be painful, difficult, or whatever. And if it's a relationship which is falling apart, you know it's dog poo. When a relationship ends, rather great thing with dog poo is that you can dig it under your mango tree, which makes your mangoes taste more sweeter than the mangoes next door. When the point of that story always is, is whenever you taste those mangoes, remember them. That is the dog poo transformed by nature in the same way to the relationship, the difficulties of problems, whether it survives and you have to endure the difficulties of living with another person or you decide to break up. You can make it whatever happens. You can always make a beautiful mango out of a beautiful garden, out of manure. It's fertilizer. So the point is here one doesn't need to be too afraid. Whatever happens. You can always make something out of it. You can grow, you can learn. You can be kind. You can advance on the path of knowledge, understanding, compassion, peace. So when we understand that the fear factor can be diminished, when the fear factor is diminished. Now we know that, okay. You know, if we stay together, we're about to do something, okay? If we split apart, we'll be able to do something. This is not this terrible. This terrible. Uh, what's it called? Uh, life and death situation. I must split or I must keep together. It's not so absolute. Because you know that sometimes that, you know, people stay together and they work it out together and they endure together, and. Okay, it might not be the best in life, but it's good enough. You can get by, and sometimes you can make something out of that relationship. And if it doesn't have work and you decide to split up, you can still do something about that. And I've seen them many times as part of my job of being a monk or being a bit of a marriage counselor. Sometimes I wonder why they come and ask monk such questions. So we never been married, but nevertheless, not always. Always. Whether you're with your fellow monks, whether you're with your friends, it's all relationships. And so we get very skilled because we're mindful and alert. And it's this particular point that mindfulness is always such a powerful factor. In the second part about having wise decisions. Because when we're mindful this mindfulness is that alertness is openness of mind. It is a widening of your possibilities, a widening of the avenues which you can go along. Sometimes we think that there's only two choices, so we have to split up or we stay together. But then when there's a mindfulness, there's so many other doors, so many other possibilities can actually come up. For example, I remember that one person was very wise. They had an argument with their wife, very bad argument. And instead of splitting up, instead of thinking, should I just apologize right now? Or should I sort of go and say, right, this is it. What they did, because of their mindfulness, they saw another opportunity that wasn't just two doors to go through, not just, you know, breaking off the relationship or continuing on. They chose another door. They came to our monastery and hang out at the monastery for a week. That's a wonderful thing to do, because one of the things happens in a monastery and surprise to peace and quiet, a calm time to reflect. And sometimes we were making a decisions just. We need to walk away from the heat of the situation to gain perspective The perspective is like this is a simile I haven't given here for a long, long while. It's a simile of what is the size of a hand. This is my hand over here. What is its size? It really depends on how close it is to me. Now my hand is so close to me, it blocks out the whole world. I cannot see all of you. I cannot see so that the camera in the background. I cannot see anything at all. My hand is so big it blocks out the whole universe. Now is it my hand's fault? Or is it the fact I've put it in the wrong place? If I put my hand where it belongs, which is the end of my arm, sure I can see my hand, but I can also see each one of you as well. This is called perspective. Sometimes when we have the difficulties in our relationships, the problem sometimes is just too close to us. We cannot get a good perspective. And then if we make a decision on that, we're acting out of stupidity. Not really clear thinking, not clear seeing. Which is why it is great. Whenever there's this life. Decisions to be made is important. Decisions that affect your happiness and happiness of so many other people that we gain a means. To walk away a little bit to get a proper perspective when it's so close. We'd be so much when it's out here. It's my relationship. Yeah, but it's more to life than just your relationship. You can actually see it, but you can see something more. This is the problem. We can see more than the problem. This is a difficulty. You see more than the difficulties is the happiness. We can see more than the happiness. You get things in a big perspective, and a lot of times be able to do that. You got to have a time of peace and quiet, a time to actually to take that thing which is enrich has been so important to you and put it where it really belongs. Yeah, it's important, but maybe not as crucial because you see that so many difficulties and problems and things which people argue about, the sort of stuff which does break up a relationship sometimes when they tell me those causes a thing. What are you breaking up for? For such small things Only a tiny thing. And they haven't always done that. Now, that story, which somebody told me in Malaysia, and that's not what they told me, but the experience I had in Malaysia when I was teaching at a university gave a talk on Buddhism. A question time afterwards, somebody put their hand up and said, my husband has lied to me. I've called him out. I can't trust him anymore. Should I break off the relationship? Should I get divorced? And that's what they said. Because if you can't trust anybody, especially their partner, can you stay with them anymore? Because isn't like you. No relationship built on this trust and someone's lied to you. So I put it in perspective. She had to lie right in front of her and that's all she could see the lie. So I said, madam, what are you doing in this university? She said she was a lecturer in mathematics. So I said, let's do some statistics. How long you been married to that guy said about three years. I said, let's call that 1000 days. Let's assume that every day your partner, your husband, has said 20 things to you on average, which could be right, which could be wrong. That's in the time since you were married. He said 20,000 things to you. Now he's lied for the first time. So you should know. Lecture in mathematics that according to statistics, probability theory. It means on his past record. The next time he says something to you. There's a 20,000 to 1 chance he's telling the truth. And I said, isn't that trustworthy? I think that's pretty trustworthy. If our politicians had a 20,000 to 1 chance of telling the truth, that would be amazing. So because of that, she saw what I was, you know, pointing out the lie was so big, that's all she could see. And she couldn't see anything else. And this is the one thing with wisdom that if we can keep things in perspective, I think that would actually save so many relationships, because it's the one lie which is always see, which breaks the relationship. It's the one mistake. It's the one time when the person hasn't done the right thing, and we just cannot see all the other times when they have done the right thing, where they have been the perfect husband, the wonderful wife, the caring partner. And how come it is that just a few mistakes is all we see, and that is what breaks the relationship. So whenever you're contemplating breaking the relationship, ask yourself why? Ask yourself why not see what the problems are, what the benefits are, and put them in a proper perspective out here. Because when I put my hand out here, sure I can see my hand, but I can also see other things as well. This is a psychology which I have learnt as a monk by meditating for so many years. Too often our mind just focuses on this half of life, actually less core to a 10th of life. And they were blind to everything else. So when we're making decisions, if we are going to be wise, we have to be fair. So when you're making a judgement, you've got to really stand back and see the situation. As you would imagine, other people see it. Get out of your shoes and look at it from a distance. Which is why taking a retreat, taking time out, relaxing, whatever it is you do. Like coming to a monastery for a few days, then maybe that's a good opportunity. However, there is this one lady who came and told me once because in Thailand, very often when ladies have problems with their husbands, they always come and stay in a monastery. So much so that she became afraid of coming to our monastery, because she was afraid what other people would think of her if she came to monasteries so often. They would tell her, you are having trouble with your husband then? No, no. I just thought coming to the monastery, there's no trouble at all. Yeah, that's what they all said. The only reason to come to a monastery is because you're having marriage trouble. But that is not obviously the case. But that was the case sometimes in some monasteries in Thailand, the only time people will go to the monastery is if they're having difficulties. But the point being here is that the monastery does give you all the retreat, the space, the timeout does give you the time for getting that perspective, which is just so important to be able to make proper, wise decisions. And if you're going to save that relationship, it's the same attitude which I was told for the summer today to actually to overcome guilt, to overcome anger, to overcome negativity. If a person. Another person, you want to destroy them, you want to reject them. You're angry at them. You want revenge on them because they've hurt you. How can you forgive somebody else? How can you put aside the faults in the relationship and move forward? How can you do that? How can you forgive yourself sometimes if you've done a terrible thing? As another lady asked me afterwards. She's working in a prison. She was trying to cancel a murder. How can the murderer forgive himself and move on? And the way to move on is actually the way to forgive yourself and others. There is a standard first step. That standard first step is to look and find. To discover something in that object of your anger and rejection. Something which is worthy of respect. To see something which deserves saving. It's like if you got like a a house which has been, you know, worn down, broken off or something. If there's something worth saving, you don't bulldoze it. It's the same as if there's somebody who's really hurt and harmed you. If you can see something in them which you can respect, which you can actually, uh, see is worthy, then that becomes a start of forgiveness. You find they're not all bad. A lot of times the revenge, the guilt, the destruction, it's always comes about when we see there's nothing worth saving in that anymore. There's nothing worth keeping. And sometimes we want to destroy another person because of that. Sometimes we want to destroy ourselves. Sometimes we want to destroy a relationship because we see nothing. Nothing in there. At all, which is worth keeping, which is worth saving, which is worth building on. You know that if you have even a spark, you can soon get a fire. And if you have to succeed soon, you can get a whole forest. A little bit is all you need to grow into something great. And this is why if we see in our relationship there is something there, a little bit there which is worth saving, which is worth respecting. Then you can save their relationship. A lot of times the growth, the keeping together comes from respect. You know, those of you who've been through a relationship and it's broken up at that time, you want to break up. You can't see anything which you respect in the other person. Those of you who have been into guilt and depression, you can't see anything in yourself, in guilt which is worthy of forgiveness and depression. You can't see anything in life which is worthy of celebrating. The whole thing looks black. The first thing you have to do is actually deliberately look somewhere for something which is redeeming. Why don't you start to see that? It's so easy to forgive somebody else. You can see something good in them. I remember when I was visiting my mother some years ago with this guy walking down the street, and there was some old building in the south of England somewhere, collapsed, and this guy was out of work. It was a pretty no hoper. He had a relationship and marriage, but his wife was actually fighting for divorce, I think, at the time. He raced into this, uh, building and it was a hero. Managed to save a couple of kids, and he was, uh, you know, he risked his own life. It was a very heroic thing he did. I remember listening to the news in my mother's flat that interviewing this man's wife. He was in hospital with no wounds. He was going to recover this man. His wife said, look, I was about to divorce this guy. Now I see what he did. I'm going to carry on this relationship with the guy. She saw something in her husband that he. She had forgotten. Something really worthwhile, something redeemable. And that was enough to keep the relationship together. Something to work on. So wonderful way of actually solving relationship problems is looking at the relationship, looking at the partner and deliberately stopping, looking at all their faults. What's wrong with them? The time they lie, they don't look at something which you can love in them and you can care for that. You can worship even some redeemable thing which you can really respect. Once you have that, what usually happens, you can see something else which you can respect in them and something more. It's an old psychological trick. Once you can see something good, it's as if you've taken your your head and turned it from the left to the right when you turn to the left. Or you can see it's about turning to the right. You can see the other side. A lot of times the way we reject people is only can we see half the story, half that person? And this is something which I've learnt as a monk Sometimes I can't reject any of you. You. Don't care who you are, what you've done. Sometimes again, I've been into the jails and seen some gross people, some really mean and nasty people. But my goodness, I can see something good in them. There is great when you see something beautiful in the worst of offenders. It's amazing how they treat you. Because if you see something beautiful in a rapist and a murderer in a sort of a fair and a hoodlum, then they can see it in themselves. Some of the guys I used to teach in prison, they were sort of Gorillaz, real meanies. But because I looked at them and saw something else other than their crime rather than their history of violence, I see something soft inside of them is wonderful to see the way that they warmed and they became great friends If you saw their crime, if you saw the hurt they did to somebody else. The murder, the violence. That's why you saw snow. Where you can forgive those people. You saw something else. Then that's what they will show back to you. It's one of the ladies who was a nun in Thailand and very early years. She was from England before she became a Buddhist nun. She worked in Holloway Prison in London, especially with Myra Hindley. Those of you might know that she was one of the most notorious, uh, women prisoners in the British penal system. She was known as the Moors Murderers together with her partner, though had abduct children, tortured them before they kill them, and they record the screams and the pleas for mercy on an audiotape. Sadism. The cruelty, which is immense. And rightly, they were jailed for life. There had to be in protective custody because even other prisoners would try and kill these two for what they did to children. Not one, but many. It's one of the worst crimes. But this man told me that she'd worked with Myra Hindley and found her a beautiful woman, kind of spiritual. And of course, for many people, they would say that is impossible. But that is the truth in its worst of criminals. That can be such a beautiful part, if that's what you see. That's what they show back. And it's the same with those people who have want to end the relationship with themselves. In other words, called suicide, depression. It's only because we only can see the negative inside of ourselves. We can't see anything good inside of ourselves. But if you can make that breakthrough, see the first thing of respect in oneself. The first bit of beauty, if that's what you can see in yourself, that's what your self shows you back. That's what grows. So put it in brief. The way I put it in place so people can remember this. When you've got a garden, if you've water the flowers, the flowers are what grows. If you water your weeds, it's still weeds which grow. Well, that simply means if you encourage the beauty, the goodness, the things you can respect that grows. But how many of us in relationship water the weeds? So we talk about so we think about this or we contemplate. That's why those things grow. So we have to be wise in the relationship. We have to actually know how to have that relationship and how to make sure that we don't go off thinking about things, perceiving things and unwise way because that will hurt us and hurt other people. So we make a decision please open the mind. Be wise. It's incredible what you can do with wisdom. Some of the most hopeless relationships and keep going. Change of attitudes through wisdom. Widening the mind. And that's why any of you who come here and learn meditation and really get into this Buddhism business where I can have a relationship with almost anybody, I do. Go here, go there. The relationship with the Benedictine monks, with Jews, with Muslims, I don't care. That relationship. It's a relationship of respect. Seeing something in the other person I can really respect. What was it that some years ago, a couple of years ago, I was invited to go to Christchurch School to give the the morning. Um, what's it called? Morning assembly. Christchurch girls. It's an Anglican school, isn't it? Yeah. Anglican school. And so, um, Frank Sheehan was the chaplain there. Great guy. I don't I don't think he knows whether it's a Catholic or an Anglican because he was once once was one and then is another. I think he doesn't care either. He's just a good guy, the spiritual fella. But the headmaster was an Anglican. And so as we were walking into the chapel before the the assembly, it was the headmaster said, now listen, uh, there's a little shrine in there, a Christian shrine. You're a Buddhist monk. We usually bow, but you don't have to bow to the Christian shrine. And I took offense. I said, why not? I demand my rights to bow to the Christian shrine. So we are Buddhist. I said I could still see something in Christianity, which I really respect. And that is what I'm going to bow to. Okay, I'm a Buddhist. There's obviously many things in Christianity I don't agree with, but nevertheless, there's some things which I can agree with. Therefore I can respect it. I can bow to it. I can have Christians as my friends. I can have relationships now, monk relationships with the Benedictine monks. And, you know, see, now you can understand how relationships can work, and they can keep on going and they can keep on building. Without wisdom. A lot of times that the other two factors we make our decisions on desire and ill will know us desire. We may be thinking of having another partner. We've fed up. We want something else and ill will. I'm not fed up with this. You get angry as soon as you get angry, you get into this whole, um, perversion of perception where you can only see what justifies your anger. You know what that's like when somebody is angry at you, whatever you do, they just use it as evidence to justify their anger. Even if you're kind, it's too late. You should have been kind of earlier, so that doesn't matter. I'm kind now. The point being, when we're angry, when we're upset, we just don't see things fairly. So when we have desire. So we want out of this, we don't see things clearly. So we should never, ever make a decision out of desire, ill will, stupidity or fear. So the first thing you should do is to make sure that those aren't there. When you're making a decision to continue a relationship or to end it. Sometimes those decisions are hard. Kids involved, finances involved, and a huge number of parents involved. You know your life. Involve your businesses involved. So what you always do is put everything you can possibly find into the balances, but you don't need to worry about it. It's a worry about worry. When we make decisions, which means that the decisions are just all out of fear usually, and stupidity. We make wrong decisions again and again and again. So say about desire why people make decisions out of desire. A good example of that is the story told to me by a conservative many years ago, because when he first went to visit his hometown, he met one of his friends from high school. And as soon as she saw him, he said, oh, it's wonderful you're here. You can come to my wedding. I'm getting married next week. Jonas, congratulations. You're getting married. Yes. This is number seven. And seven. You've been married seven times. And because it was an old friend, you know, she could ask why. What are you doing this for? And she says. She said I in love. So the dating. I love falling in love. That's beautiful. You meet someone in your fall in love and it's great. Sort of. You know, the time when they propose to you and you say yes. And they planning the wedding and all the the friends and everything else. That's great. That's the best part. And even the wedding ceremony, you know, wearing white, all of your aunties crying and everybody else, I said, that's beautiful. And she said, it's what happens after the wedding I don't like. So a few days after the wedding. Wedding, we get divorced. I start all over again. At least he was honest. You know, there's some truth. And I could have respect a person like that in some respects. There's always someone you can respect. Because. Sometimes the best part, isn't it? But of course, that's just the ending. The relationship out of out of desire. It's not a very good way of going about things. So make sure you're not acting out of desire or will, stupidity or fear. And then you make a cool decision. You put everything programming into your mind. Now, obviously I don't do this with relationships, but I do this with other decisions which I have to make as an abbot, as a spiritual director, as a boss of a Buddhist society. I put everything into my mind as much information, clear information as I possibly can, and then I leave it. I don't even worry about it. Because of meditation, I've got a great ability just to let things go put it in to really get the research and then leave it alone and completely just relax, go and do something else. Read the newspaper, go and give a dharma talk. Give a talk at all about whatever. And I just wait one day or two days. Three days of the most. The answer always comes when I wait for that answer. When the answer comes, you can recognize it. Yeah, this is obvious. This is what I should do, and I always follow that. And of course, I have a successful monastery, a successful Buddhist society. Maybe in the world I'm not much of a success. I've got no superannuation stuffed away from my retirement. No money, no possessions, no family to speak of. But I'm pretty successful as a monk, so it must be working well. And that's how I make decisions. So if you have a relationship and you're not quite sure whether you should carry on or whether you should stop, put all the information in clearly without fear, without stupidity, without desire, ill will and leave it alone. See what answer comes out. If the answer is to carry on a relationship, then there's many strategies you can actually use to actually, obviously the relationship was in trouble to make it better for goodness sake. There you are. You've got the relationship. You're going to keep it going for a while. Put some more effort, but not willpower, wisdom, power into your relationship. Don't just know. Think of yourself. As I said last week, don't think of him. Don't think of me now. Think of what's between the two of you. Because too often the relationships. And when you think of what I want, what I need, my my problems, my this or my that, or you think of what he needs, what she needs or their problems are both are the wrong places to look. We look for what's between us. It's a relationship of it's not his problem. It's not her problem. This was between us. If we look in the right place, it's incredible what you can do with a relationship and how you can actually know. You may only have a last flower in the whole garden left, and the rest is all full of weeds. Once you know what to do, you can order that flower, and that flower just takes over and smothers the weeds after a year or two and get it back again. If you're wise, if that's a decision which comes up, we have strategies, ways to build on what you've got and to help make that relationship flourish again. You start to think about why you fell in love in the first place and what you saw in that person, you really respect it. You can respect again and just how you got that relationship going, the care, the effort, all of the concern when she showed in those early days, you show it again, you realize. So why that relationship started to go wrong is because you were careless. Meditation on mindfulness is not just being alert is being caring what I say. And I gave this talk in my monastery and Wednesday night, whatever you do, give it everything you've got 100% in your life. Don't be lazy. Sometimes lazy. We think, oh, that means that I've got to go to work. It's not just work. It's when you're with somebody, be with them. Put their effort, energy, that life into whatever you're doing. And I can see that when I give a talk, I really put everything I've got into, no matter how tired I am and I talk to you, I give it everything I've got. This is something which my predecessor, Tony Jacquot, told me once. He said, I've been watching you for years. And so whatever you do, if it's laying bricks or writing a letter or doing whatever you do, you always give it 100%. That has been my character. I don't know where I got that from. But that's what you should do in your relationships. If you give that care 100% care, you can be successful. You can get anything back together again. It's only because we've got 90% now. So that's why the relationship doesn't last. But if you decide the decision does come up, it's irredeemable. It's just like an old car. It's a waste of time trying to keep it going. It's just beyond issues by date. Then first of all, understand that that is also part of nature. We make a lot in Buddhism about impermanence and each other. Things change the relationships. They come. Eventually things die away. They go every tree one day will die. This is part of life. It's impermanence. But when that happens, if that's a decision you make that it is impermanent, it's dead. It's gone. And don't allow negativity to come up. Because after a great relationship. Sure is dead now. Don't blame the other person. Don't blame yourself. Because that's sometimes what happens when we have a relationship. We say it's a failed relationship. When it's a fail, you want to blame somebody. It's not a failed relationship. It's just things have come, things have gone. It's impermanent. It's the nature of all things. So when we don't blame anybody and a lot of the problems of broken relationships just completely vanish. We don't blame ourselves. We don't blame others. It's nature in the same way that after the tsunami, I came up here and I said, look, you can't blame, blame God. You can't blame the people who is their karma. It's just like, this is what happens in the same way the soldier who got shot once and went to see again tried to complain, why me? I, John Charles said, what do you expect? That's what happens when you become a soldier. People shoot at you and some of those bullets are going to hit. This par for the course. In the same way when a relationship starts to fall apart. What do you expect? That's what happens with some relationships. That's what they do. So I don't think it's his fault or it's her fault or it's somebody else's fault in his life. Before you get into a relationship. Please read the small print. Carefully. Yeah. This is what happens. It might work. It might not work for whatever happens. You can read a lot. You can learn from it so that you can grow from it. If it's have a wonderful relationship, that's great. You're happy. Well done. If it doesn't work, wonderful. Great. Well done. You've got more of the dog pizza for your mango trees. Whichever way that positive attitude can always a winner. You don't blame anybody. It's life. And then put aside YouTube towards life. The impermanence of life. Life and death. Rise and fall. Fortune. Misfortune. What? The political. The worldly dumbness. He said this is what we learn from. This is the the fertilizer for the spiritual life. This is how we grow. This is where compassion comes from. As the building blocks of the most beautiful part of life. If everything went so well for you in your life, you would not be a beautiful person. You do need the difficulties, the troubles, the poo to fertilize your compassion, your wisdom, your sense of being a human being, a beautiful one. So when these things happen, you can say, right, no, blame me. What are we going to do about this? Every time someone comes to complain about, ah, he said this or he did that. She did that. It's her fault. She broke off the relationship. No, it's because he didn't care. Look, stop blaming people when the relationship ends. Especially in a marriage. You start blaming people in their marriage and look what happens. You have this incredible acrimony, and that is really, really painful. So it ended with Anisha. It happens like the soldier being shot. So nobody's fault. It's not your fault. It's not her fault or his fault or anybody's fault. It's just life. What comes together will one day parts. Who understands that one can accept these things without any blame? And of course, it's incredible what you can do. If there's that degree of acceptance, you can say, okay, well, I don't want to hurt you. I don't want to hurt him. I don't want to hurt the kid. So don't hurt anybody. Here we are. Now, what can we do about this? When people come to me and complain, I say, look, stop complaining. Instead, let's see what we're doing about this. I got this tsunami when the newspapers rang up, I said, look, stop blaming God, stop blaming karma, stop blaming anybody. Because the longer you waste time blaming, the longer it will take to actually to do something. Look, there's people over there who need houses, need food, need medicine. If we waste all our time finding who's to blame, we're not actually doing anything. So stop blaming the cause is there is happened. Now let's get on with it. Let's do something positive. So I didn't have to give any shrift to blaming anybody after the tsunami. So what are we doing about it? Let's put all that aside. We'll discuss that later on. There's work to be done. So whenever there's a split, relationship is ended. Instead of blaming somebody whose fault it is, there's work to be done. There's two lives, sometimes three lives. Four lives, five lives with the kids. There's something which needs to be done. It's a tsunami has hit your relationship. There's somebody without a house. People without the spiritual home. The home of love, without the food. It's like people destitute. Now, let's make sure everyone's got a home and food and love and kindness So we don't blame. We work in a positive way to see. Now here it is. What can we do about this? And with that degree of that sort of attitude, it's amazing just how when people split up in a relationship, even if there are kids, this is not a negative thing after all, for the people, even the kids realize, yeah, relationships are like that. They may last, they may fade away and disappear. Welcome to life. They're learning about the realities of life. But if they're, you know, their parents can actually show the way and say, yes. No. People come, people go. Friendships and relationships sometimes disappear, but this is a way we can deal with it. Not blaming without anger or without aversion, but in a positive way. We can see, okay, now what can we do? Relationships over Let's see how we can deal with this in a compassionate, kind way. And a fair way. So this is why the Buddha would never allow any justification for revenge, no matter what a person did. He gave this beautiful symmetry of the soul, which is one of the most powerful teachings of the Buddha, so powerful that when I was in Sydney, someone asked, can you actually really do that? The similar saw was this if somebody comes like bandits, thieves, thugs and they hold you down and they saw your limbs off with just a ordinary saw, not a chainsaw, a circular power saw, but a slow saw torturing you for no reason. He says if you have just one thought of ill will towards your torturous and your abuses. You're not a disciple of mine, said the Buddha. Well, he was actually saying there was never any justification at all for revenge or anger, even as somebody was abusing you and you were thoughtless and they were harming you, even torturing you. It's a powerful, powerful teaching because in our world, we always seek some justification. Yeah, you've hurt me. That shouldn't have been done right. That justifies my anger and ill will trying to hurt you back. Remember reading this one story? This couple? The British married to a United States. I think the woman was British. He was a US citizen. And to get her own back on him because he really wanted revenge, she still had the keys to his apartment in New York. She went in there on the weekend when he she knew he was away for the weekend. She picked up his telephone, rang the international code for the automatic time in London, and left the phone off the hook because it was like an automatic answer phone. It would go on and it did go on for about 50 hours until he came home. And so he was faced with his huge bill, 50 hours of international telephone calls. In those days, it was a few thousand. About $10,000 or something. Just out of wanting revenge. Okay, that's a stupid thing to do. We want to do that for what? Does that really help? That's actually not the Buddhist way at all. So if a relationship does start to unravel. Okay. What are we doing about this? No blaming anybody. No one could hurt anybody. What can I do about this? This is my situation right now. Here it is. What can I do about it? And there's always something positive you can do no matter what you experience. And you're showing your kids and other people their relationship does fall apart. Doesn't mean your principles, your kindness, your love, your wisdom that doesn't need to fall apart. You can still be a beautiful person and say, well, this relationship has died. There's nothing left, nothing worth saving anymore. I'm not going to get angry at you or angry at myself. It's been a wonderful time together. Thank you so much. Today, this afternoon we had a funeral service which I took. Said the same old story again and again. Story of my father's death. You know that story? Many of you. I looked upon my father's life as a concert, and the concert ended. I never felt sad. Cancers have to end. But instead I thought what a wonderful time that was. We had together 16 years. So beautiful life. Thank you so much, father, for being there. I never felt sad to this day at the death of my father. In fact, I was grateful for it. For the time we had together a son with his father as a relationship, partners in a marriage, whatever they gave partners, heterosexual partners, married or just unmarried. It doesn't matter when you're together for that time. If it does end, can you have the same attitudes? I had the death of my father. No anger, no remorse, no blaming, no negativity. But looked upon your relationship. This amazing concert you had. You're so grateful to that person you shared your your months, your years with. A cancer has to end is ended very shortly, very soon. But thank you so much for all the times we had together. So we don't need that negativity. So what I'm saying here, whether the relationship carries on or whether it stops, make sure you make the wise decision by checking you don't act out of fear, out of stupidity, desire or ill will make that decision. Clearly, whatever happens, if you carry on as many strategies you can help you with to keep that relationship going. You have to see something you respect in that partner. Focus on what's between you, not on her, not on him. And good chance he can keep going. But putting all the ingredients, all this sort of the data in, if it comes out Yeah, it's going to end. The concert is ended. No need to be negative about it. Okay, maybe a little bit painful, but that's just fertilize a pure mango tree. And make sure that this is what you experiencing. This is it. How are you experiencing it? You can always make something of it. Make it positive. Make it beautiful. Like this story of a cancer ended our relationship. It's been a wonderful time. Think of all the beautiful things which we've experienced together. Thank you. And one thing I'll tell you to finish off. There's always another concert coming next week to says. There's always another talk here in Dermalogica every Friday night. So don't be sad that this one is ending now. Sister Irma is coming next week. Thank you. Okay, so that's an interesting topic. And I really thank the two people, one from Canada and one from here who suggested that copy. I've really given it my very best. If it's not quite good enough as things I missed out. I am a monk after all. There are many questions about what I've been talking about this evening. Yeah. Let me see if you see him or not. I see the cyclist is very good in the first column. You see someone else who? As I said, he's not there. Uh. Horizon blue. Well, I'm on a horse. Well, the real time. The reasons for being in relationships. Sometimes you haven't got much choice. You just find yourself in one. How did that happen? Well, there you are. So remember that life, as you should know by now, is completely out of control. We think that really that we can control it, that we're in no, uh, command of our destiny. But in many of you know by now that you're not. Things happen, life happens. And your job is that you can't actually control about what happens to your life, but you can control how it happens. How you respond to it. That's the most important thing in life. You have a relationship that happens. Yeah. Make something out of it. If it falls apart. Make something out of it. If you're single for a long time, make something out of being single. If you have a great partnership, make something out of it. The ingredients of your life. You can't control those. You reach your poor. You win the lottery, or you lose everything in your business. You get cancer or your healthy. Oh my goodness. I was telling somebody the other day, my grandmother, she drank alcohol, whiskey to know how much whiskey she drank. She smoked. She know our main food was fish and chips. Really greasy. I mean, it's all type of fish and chips. I think nowadays they put them in, like, canola oil or something. Just really greasy lard, pig fat, whatever it was, they used to cook with it. And she lived to 96. And she just died of a four year old age. No cancer, no heart problem, nothing. She survived the Blitz in London. She was indestructible. So. So it's not just the ingredients, but how you deal with this. You always had this positive attitude towards life. So it's that's actually most importantly not the ingredients of your life but how you relate to them. So yes, sometimes it might happen. Chris a beautiful lamppost might come into your life. Yes it does. How did that happen? My goodness. Okay. It's the same as actually like in a separation. It's not a separation, which is a problem. How you relate to that separation. You stay together, how you relate, to stay together. That's the important part. Yes. Sorry. I have Okay. The. The pain you cause other people. Sometimes you don't cause other people pain. So my happiness and my suffering said. Was your happiness on your suffering completely your concern. In that respect, we allow ourselves to be hurt. That's why I've got this. This saying which I follow. I never allow other people to control my happiness. So I give a stupid talk. I'll give a stupid answer to that wonderful question you say I jump from. That was really ridiculous and stupid. I'm not going to worry about that, because I know I make mistakes, and I'm not going to allow myself to lose sleep over anything because I know that it's my the ingredients which which are presented to me in life. It's the ingredients aren't the problem. You may kick me. You may call me an idiot, but that's the ingredient that. What am I doing with the. We want to see? Is that really we don't cause pain or suffering to other people. So I see other people allow themselves to be hurt. And they. So they throw away their chance of happiness. So because of that, if you have done your very best, you have haven't gone out to hurt the other person. You try to be compassionate and the best. No matter what you do, no matter what you say, some people are always going to take it in the wrong way and they are going to be hurt. But this basically is their fault, not yours, not mine. Look, you know, when I became a monk and I hurt my mother, not because I was being a monk. Because I was living such a long way away in Thailand. But, you know, I realized that I needed to do this, and it had to do this. It was good in the end for my mother. She got much more out of it. So sometimes that was like a son brother relationship. And it was like a breaking off because I would have to be a monk. So if that actually happens, you're not, you know, the whole purpose is not to hurt the other person. That's. But their response to what you're doing goes in the equation. You put that in the balance you're about to in a relationship. I'm going to hurt them about this. Whatever happens. It would be wonderful if each one of us had the proper good Buddhist attitude so that you know your partner would not be hurt. Who said, I'm really disappointed? I really loved you and cared for you, but that is marvellous dog poo you've given me. Thank you know my loved one. So when our relationship ended, you gave him the most wonderful gift. You know, the heartache, the pain, the dog poo. Which is. I know it's going to make me a wonderful person. Thank you. Darling. As you go off with your new partner. Now that it's a Buddhist attitude. Wouldn't be wonderful if people could do like that. And then, you know, you wouldn't have this terrible fear about, you know, you're going to hurt somebody else. And of course, you know that I'm not being sexist here, but I think many people would agree that it's the women who are just so afraid of hurting others, especially their partners. And sometimes I just want to hurt them. So they just allow themselves to be hurt too much. Care about your partner, but also care about yourself and especially care what's in between the two of you. So yeah, it's a factor, but it shouldn't be that big a factor. And there's other factors as well. So that sort of answered the question. Okay. It's one of the back cover there. Yeah. That's a really good question. And I don't want to just to pass it over. But it's a huge question to answer in 1 or 2 minutes. But generally speaking, this, you know, the compassion. We try to do the very best we can, we will never will be perfect because this is not a a perfect place. This is like a school where people are, you know, they go into the school without knowledge, needing to be trained. So I look upon, you know, people who you know are that kind and caring to animals to be noticed as the the university graduates, the high minded people. But they should never really look down upon the low minded people you know who still are very, quite cool now, the farmers or the fishermen or something. And these are people who are learning, because I remember that as a vegetarian when I was a layperson, when my mother would no eat, have a, have a sausages or whatever, because we had to share the same frying pan for my, um, was it been resource? I would scrub that frying pan until it was so many times, and I could not walk past a butcher's shop. I had to go the other, and I looked upon all of my friends who lent me carnivore, carnivore, carnivore. I was just over the top there, so I never try to look down upon anybody. I respect people who are kind and caring, and I respect the animals as well. And if an animal is kind, respect them. But I never hit the cat when it catches a mouse. A suppress the cat can do. I try and encourage the cat not to catch the mice. You know what we do with the mice we catch. And I'm honestly. Well, I don't do that these days because I think I told it in the talk one day, whenever we used to catch the mice in our kitchen, we'd have, like a Buddhist mouse trap. You know, it wouldn't kill the mouse, which is trap it. And we would take it and release it at the kind of prison from. Miss karma, it is stolen from the monastery. So if I should go to prison. But the lady says to me. So that's how you could record. You have to put it somewhere. Anyway, that's a big question. Can you please ask it again next time? Because I. There's no way I can answer that adequately in the time which I have. So if your heart's in the right place and see how kind we can be Relationships with animals, with people, with everything, and I think we may make it a nicer place, a more peaceful place, but especially I was focusing on relationships with men and women. No men and men, women and women and other relationships, because that's causes huge amounts of pain. And I really, again, to sum up, thanks for those people who asked me to talk about that, because, you know, I would never thought of talking about that myself. And it's something which Buddhists should address. So hopefully I've made a contribution there to that huge problem in your life. Thank you.