WEBVTT

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There is one phrase that
I have always wanted

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to say to everyone in my life.

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That phrase is "Life is easy."

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It's so easy and fun.

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I never thought like that before.

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When I was in Bangkok, I felt like
life is very hard, very complicated.

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I was born in a poor village
on the Northeastern of Thailand

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And when I was a kid,
everything was fun and easy,

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but when the TV came,
many people came to the village,

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they said,

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"You are poor, you need to chase
success in your life.

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You need to go to Bangkok
to pursue success in your life."

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So I felt bad, I felt poor.

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So I needed to go to Bangkok.

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When I went to Bangkok,
it was not very fun.

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You need to learn, study
a lot and work very hard,

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and then you can get success.

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I worked very hard,
eight hours per day at least,

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but all I could eat was just
a bowl of noodles per meal,

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or some Tama dish
of fried rice or something like that.

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And where I stayed was very bad,
a small room where a lot of people slept.

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It was very hot.

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I started to question a lot.

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When I work hard, why is my life so hard?

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It must be something wrong,

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because I produce a lot of things,
but I cannot get enough.

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And I tried to learn, I tried to study.

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I tried to study in the university.

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It's very hard to learn in university,
because it's very boring.

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(Laughter)

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And when I looked at subjects
in the university,

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in every faculty, most of them
had destructive knowledge.

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There's no productive knowledge
in university for me.

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If you learn to be
an architect or engineer,

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that means you ruin more.

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The more these people work,
the mountain will be destroyed more.

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And a good land in Chao Praya Basin

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will be covered
with concrete more and more.

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We destroy more.

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If we go to agriculture faculty
or something like that,

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that means we learn how to poison,

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to poison the land, the water,

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and learn to destroy everything.

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I feel like everything we do
is so complicated, so hard.

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We just make everything hard.

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Life was so hard
and I felt disappointed.

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I started to think about,
why did I have to be in Bangkok?

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I thought about when I was a kid,

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nobody worked eight hours per day,

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everybody worked two hours,
two months a year,

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planting rice one month
and harvesting the rice another month.

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The rest is free time,
ten months of free time.

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That's why people have
so many festivals in Thailand,

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every month they have festival.

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(Laughter)

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Because they have so much free time.

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And then in the daytime,
everyone even takes a nap.

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Even now in Laos, go to Laos if you can,

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people take a nap after lunch.

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And after they wake up, they just gossip,

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how's your son-in-law,
how's your wife, daughter-in-law.

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People have a lot of time,

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but because they have a lot of time,

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they have time to be with themselves.

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And when they have time
to be with themselves,

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they have time to understand themselves.

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When they understand themselves,

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they can see what they want in their life.

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So, many people see
that they want happiness,

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they want love,
they want to enjoy their life.

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So, people see
a lot of beauty in their life,

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so they express that beauty in many ways.

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Some people by carving
the handle of their knife,

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very beautiful,

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they weave the baskets very nicely.

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But, now, nobody does that.

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Nobody can do something like that.

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People use plastic everywhere.

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So, I feel like
it's something wrong in there,

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I cannot live this way I'm living.

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So, I decided to quit University,

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and went back home.

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When I went back home,
I started to live like I remember,

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like when I was a kid.

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I started to work two months a year.

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I got four tons of rice.

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And the whole family, six people,

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we eat less than half a ton per year.

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So we can sell some rice.

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I took two ponds, two fish ponds.

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We have fish to eat all year round.

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And I started a small garden.

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Less than half an acre.

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And I spend 15 minutes per day
to take care of the garden.

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I have more than 30 varieties
of vegetables in the garden.

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So, six people cannot eat all of it.

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We have a surplus to sell in the market.

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We can make some income, too.

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So, I feel like, it's easy,
why did I have to be in Bangkok

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for seven years, working hard
and then not have enough to eat,

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but here, only two months a year
and 15 minutes per day

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I can feed six people.

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That's easy.

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And before I thought
that stupid people like me

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who never got a good grade at school,

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cannot have a house.

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Because people who are cleverer than me,

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who are number one
in the class every year,

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they get a good job,

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but they need to work more
than 30 years to have a house.

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But me, who cannot finish university,
how could I have a house?

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Hopeless for people
who have low education, like me.

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But, then I started to do
earthly building, it's so easy.

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I spend two hours per day,
from 5 o'clock in the morning,

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until 7 o'clock in the morning,
two hours per day.

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And in three months, I got a house.

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And another friend
who's the most clever in the class,

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he spent three months
to build his house, too.

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But, he had to be in debt.
He had to pay for his debt for 30 years.

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So, compared to him, I have
29 years and 10 months of free time.

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(Laughter)

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So, I feel that life is so easy.

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I never thought I could
build a house as easy as that.

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And I keep building a house every year,
at least one house every year.

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Now, I have no money,
but I have many houses.

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(Laughter)

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My problem is in which house
I will sleep tonight.

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(Laughter)

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So, a house is not a problem,
anybody can build a house.

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The kids, 13 years old, at the school,

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they make bricks together,
they make a house.

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After one month, they have a library.

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The kids can make a house,

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a very old nun can build
a hut for herself.

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Many people can build a house.

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So, it's easy.

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If you don't believe me, try it.

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If somebody wants to have a house.

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And then, the next thing is clothing.

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I felt like I'm poor,
like I'm not handsome.

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I tried to dress like somebody else,
like a movie star.

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To make myself look good, look better.

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I spent one month to save money
to buy a pair of jeans.

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When I wore them,
I turned left, I turned right,

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looked in the mirror.

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Every time I look, I am the same person.

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The most expensive pants
cannot change my life.

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I felt like I'm so crazy,
why did I have to buy them?

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Spend one month to have a pair of pants.

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It doesn't change me.

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I started to think more about that.

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Why do we need to follow fashion?

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Because, when we follow fashion,
we never catch up with it,

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because we follow it.

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So, don't follow it, just stay here.

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(Laughter)

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Use what you have.

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So, after that, until now, 20 years,
I have never bought any clothes.

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All the clothes I have
are leftovers from people.

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When people come to visit me,
and when they leave,

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they leave a lot of clothes there.

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So, I have tons of clothes now.

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(Laughter)

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And when people see me
wear very old clothes,

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they give me more clothes.

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(Laughter)

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So, my problem is, I need
to give clothes to people very often.

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(Laughter)

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So, it's so easy.

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And when I stopped buying clothes,
I felt like, it's not only clothes,

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it's about something else in my life,

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What I learned is that
when I buy something,

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and I think about,
I buy it because I like it,

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or I buy it because I need it.

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So, if I buy it because I like it,
that means I'm wrong.

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So, I feel more free
when I think like this.

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And the last thing is,
when I get sick, what will I do?

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I really worried in the beginning,
because then I had no money.

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But, I started to contemplate more.

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Normally, sickness is a normal thing,
it's not a bad thing.

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Sickness is something to remind us
that we did something wrong in our lives,

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that's why we got sick.

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So, when I get sick, I need
to stop and come back to myself.

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And think about it, what I did was wrong.

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So, I learned how to use
water to heal myself,

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how to use earth to heal myself,

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I learned how to use
basic knowledge to heal myself.

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So, now that I rely on myself
in these four things,

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I feel like life is very easy,

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I feel something
like freedom, I feel free.

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I feel like I don't worry
about anything much,

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I have less fear, I can do
whatever I want in my life.

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Before, I had a lot of fear,
I could not do anything.

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But, now I feel very free,
like I'm a unique person on this Earth,

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nobody like me, I don't need
to make myself like anybody else.

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I'm the number one.

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So, things like this
make it easy, very light.

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And, after that,
I started to think about

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that when I was in Bangkok,
I felt very dark in my life.

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I started to think that many people
maybe thought like me at the time.

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So, we started a place called
"Pun Pun" in Chiang Mai.

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The main aim is just saving seed.

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To collect seed,
because seed is food, food is life.

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If there is no seed, no life.

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No seed, no freedom.

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No seed, no happiness.

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Because your life
depends on somebody else.

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Because you have no food.

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So, it's very important to save seed.

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That's why we focus on saving seed.

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That's the main thing in Pun Pun.

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And the second thing
is it is the learning center.

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We want to have a center
for ourselves to learn,

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learn how to make life easy.

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Because we were taught to make
life complicated and hard all the time.

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How can we make it easy? It's easy,

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but we don't know
how to make it easy anymore.

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Because we always make it complicated

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and now, we start to learn,
and learn to be together.

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Because, we were taught
to disconnect ourselves

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from everything else, to be independent,

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so we can rely on the money only.

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We don't need to rely on each other.

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But now, to be happy,
we need to come back,

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to connect to ourselves again,
to connect to other people,

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to connect our mind and body
together again.

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So, we can be happy. Life is easy.

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And from beginning until now,
what I learned

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is the four basic needs:
food, house, clothes and medicine

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must be cheap and easy for everybody,

00:12:42.271 --> 00:12:44.128
that's the civilization.

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But, if you make these four things hard
and very hard for many people to get,

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that's uncivilized.

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So, now when we look
at everywhere around us,

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everything is so hard to get.

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I feel like now is the most
uncivilized era of humans on this Earth.

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We have so many people
who finish university,

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have so many universities on the Earth,

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have so many clever people on this Earth.

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But, life is harder and harder.

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We make it hard for whom?

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We work hard for whom right now?

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I feel like it's wrong, it's not normal.

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So, I just want to come back to normal.

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To be a normal person,
to be equal to animals.

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The birds make a nest in one or two days.

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The rats dig a hole in one night.

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But, the clever humans like us

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spend 30 years to have a house,

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and many people can't believe
that they can have a house in this life.

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So, that's wrong.

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Why do we destroy our spirit,
why do we destroy our ability that much?

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So, I feel that it's enough for me,
to live in the normal way,

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in the abnormal way.

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So, now I try to be normal.

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But, people look at me
as the abnormal one.

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(Laughter)

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A crazy person.

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But, I don't care,
because it's not my fault.

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It's their fault, they think like that.

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So, my life is easy and light now.

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That's enough for me.

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People can think whatever they want.

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I cannot manage anything outside myself.

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What I can do is change my mind,
manage my mind.

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Now, my mind is light
and easy, that's enough.

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If anybody wants to have a choice,
you can have a choice.

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The choice to be easy or to be hard,
it depends on you.

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Thank you.

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(Applause)