Stretch and cough as loud as you like now.
You're not going to disturb anybody.
Scratch knees, move your legs, move your bum.
Get yourselves comfortable for the next part of this evening's festivities.
The Dhamma talk.
Excellent. So for this evening's Dhamma talk I had all sorts of ideas what I was
going to speak about, actually not many of them,
but it's quite obvious what I should speak about tonight,
because it's a problem which is common to so many
people and I've just been feeling it and overcoming it though this meditation: tiredness.
Now, 3, 4, 5 years ago, I cannot remember when,
that's the trouble with living in the present moment, as a monk we don't get
dementia, we just get living-in-the-present-momentness
[laughts] so we don't really think too much about past and future.
So other people say - when did that happen? "In the past somewhere"
we don't exactly remember when, and it's not as if you don't want
to remember, it's just the efficiency of the brain and living in this moment
rather than always living in that past.
But a few years ago when I was teaching overseas as I often do,
I was invited to spend the day at a youth seminar in Kuala Lumpur,
it's a very interesting occassion, about 400-500 young people 15-25,
doing all sorts of interesting stuff, one of the things they were doing
is that they asked all the people there, what is your most difficult emotion
as 15-25 year old, mostly Chinese Buddhists over in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
What do you find most difficult of all in life?
And the answer which came up was tiredness. I never expected that before,
but once they said that it was quite obvious why people are tired even
when they are in the late teen years, 15 to 25. You can remember your time as a
young man, a young woman, the pressure is really on you.
You have to do well at school, your parents and teachers and
friends say it's really important, so you have to do really well at homework
and get good grades.
That's one of the problems with young people, parents tell me off for this,
but I'm supporting young people, it doesn't matter so much what
grades you get at school.
People have found, Daniel Goldman, emotional intelligence, found out
that the grades you get at school and University, all those certificates,
they don't really count for much when it comes to success in life.
Success is not guaranteed by doing well at school. Something else is.
That's why I was telling people just yesterday, in Singapore, came though there
on the way back from Thailand,
that if ever your kids get an "F" at school, did they ever work out what "F" means?
I was a schoolteacher. "F" means Fantastic. [laughter]
If they get an "E" that means Excellent.
But if they get an "A" that means Arrogant. [laughter]
All these people getting so proud of getting As and straight As, they really are
a pain in the butt, aren't they. So full on themselves, "I got straight As..."
So I prefer the Fs, the Fantastics. The Excellents.
Because it's not so much the pressure on succeeding in that
competition to get good grades, or to get a place in a good university,
look at me, I got a place at one of the best universities, and what happened
to me, didn't do me any good going to Cambridge, I might as well have
gone to any old college, even no college at all.
Actually, if I hadn't gone to Cambridge, I'd probably have become a monk even earlier.
That would've been good, but anyway, this is just what happens
life, but you learn something there.
On that subject, I like rambling, one of the important events in my life
as a student which turned me more towards being a monk rather than being an academic.
At the time I didn't realise its importance but when you look
back and you find these are the crucial experiences which direct you in life,
and that was when, I was a Buddhist at university, I had a few other Buddhists,
but one of my best friends was a Christian, a very strong pracitising Christian,
he became a hippy later in life, but anyway he was a really strong Christian.
And he told me one day that together with a couple of his friends in Bible Study class
they'd started to volunteer once a week to go to the local hospital for those who had
mental disabilities and volunteer.
And when he told me that I didn't want to go, but I felt
if I didn't go I was letting down the team, Buddhism. So the only reason I
volunteered to go was just ego, just pride, "if the Christians can do it,
the Buddhists can do it as well!" That's what it was.
I'm being quite honest - I just went there because he was going there, so I had to go there.
But a strange thing happened! Like many things in life,
you go and do something for one reason, you find other reasons start to become
predominant and it really changes your life. Because those Christians, they went for
two or three weeks and then dropped out. I went there for two years.
Every afternoon when I was up in Cambridge and I would re-arrange
tutorials and everything so I could go there. I loved it and I wondered why,
why did I enjoy going there? I was helping out in the occupational therapy unit
for those people with Down's Syndrome. It was incredible to see the emotional intelligence
those kids had, not kids, young men, young women.
Even though I never knew the words "emotional intelligence"
this was in 1969-1971 or something, still, they were just so sensitive
to a world I hadn't really been trained in. And I always remember, on a couple of occasions,
I was a young man, you'd split up with your girlfriend, you'd go there and they'd pick it up straight away!
I wouldn't need to tell them, they'd come running out and give me a hug. "Why are you doing that?"
"There is something wrong isn't there?" "How the heck do you know that?"
And they were just so sensitive to my feelings, they got to know me and love me.
And they had this incredible emotional sensitivity. And when I was sitting next to Nobel laureates,
which I did in a place like that, they were socially so insensitive, they hadn't got an emotional neuron
in their brains. Well they did, I'm exaggerating there.
But when it came to the professors of life,
I preferred to spend the afternoon with people with Down's Syndrome. I learnt much more from them.
And I grew much more from them. I had to empathise with people. When you're with professors, or lecturers
or even your friends, they were all talking, ah...the word is... "gomayan" [?]
it takes me a long while to say, it's the Pali word for bullshit.
You know all in their head, no idea of their feelings. The boys and the girls couldn't
understand how to get on with each other, just all fantasies and dreams and ideas and
philosophies. You go with these people with Down's Syndrome, and they felt, they knew the emotions.
They couldn't do well at school, they were terrible at things like maths, but when it came to being able
to feel what you're feeling and actually be kind to you, they were geniuses. And it came to the point I'd
rather spend the afternoon with those people than with professors. I didn't know why at the time but
it would actually encourage me in another area of life, this great emotional intelligence.
It's because we're not sensitive to that inner world of emotions, we keep thinking too much,
doing too much, it's one of the reasons why we're tired. But anyway, these young kids I saw,
that was their biggest problem in life. And once they told me that, told everybody,
they opened up huge areas of improving our lives both physically and emotionally,
and with relations as well.
How many of you when you come home from work are grumpy?
Even angry? So many people keep asking me: "My husband is in such a bad mood
every time, he's always shouting at the kids, he's a terrible pain in the neck to live with.
Why? Can you get him some anger management counselling or something?"
I basically say, well teach him how to sleep at night.
Teach him how to have a good rest. See if he can overcome that tiredness
which is so deeply embedded in our humanity today.
I'm only saying this because this is how I understand things, there is no research
to back me up here, but I'm sure that if people did that research they'd probably
discover what I know, and that is that it's tiredness that creates so many divorces,
so many relationships would break up because of tiredness.
And sicknesses such as cancers, heart disease, because of tiredness.
And even other things, an obvious sickness which is very prevalent today
is depression - a very deep tiredness. It's such an obvious thing that there's
a big problem in this world. Maybe you've had times of tiredness
it's as if the world is too heavy to bear any longer.
You really have to push so hard just to get by, the struggle takes so much energy,
and at times you have no more energy to give, you go into this hole of depression,
just absolutely low energy, nothing to give to anything, can't even get out of bed sometimes.
Then you want to get out of bed, don't want to eat or do anything.
Simply because you've got absolutely no energy at all, you are deeply tired.
We now have chronic fatigue syndrome. I don't remember that when I was a kid.
Why is that? Of course obviously, that is a problem, tiredness, and the reason is
because we have so much to do in this world.
The reason I'm rushing off after this talk is because there's a monk
Bhante Gunaratana, a very famous monk, a really nice monk, he's been here before,
he's 88, and he was supposed to come and teach a meditation retreat at Jhana Grove this weekend.
When we heard he was here we moved Heaven and Earth to try to get him to come here
to get the retreat free for that weekend and advertise it, buy him the airline tickets.
But then he got too sick. So his doctor said no, you can't come.
So where does the buck stop? At the top - so I've got to teach
the retreat in his place. I should be relaxing this weekend,
I've just been on a long trip to Thailand teaching so many hours.
And on Monday morning I'm off again to Korea to teach there.
This should be a rest for me. So I am tired.
But I could be exhaused but there is another thing which I know,
what happens when you've been a meditator monk for so many years,
how to deal with that tiredness, so it doesn't cause you depression, irritation,
anger, all these other emotional and physical sicknesses.
How do we deal with tiredness in this world? We have to do much more than maybe our ancestors did.
So how do we deal with that tiredness? One - if you're tired you can't afford to worry about the future.
You haven't got any spare energy to waste. So sometimes when I'm very busy I refuse
to look at my calendar. If I looked at my calendar, "whoa" no one could ever do that.
Some of the other monks look at it, "how do you do that Ajahn Brahm?"
"Because I don't look at it."
You do live in the present moment, because how much energy do you waste
worrying that you will not be able to cope?
I never do that because I know just how that is going to be awful.
I told one of the monks today, because I was just really exhausted, I remember a time when I
was a young monk in Thailand, wondering around from monastery to monastery, having a great sense of freedom
but on this occasion I'd been travelling all day from just after lunch, our lunch is about 9:00
and that's it for the day, and then travelling all day in hot weather, I was in a Thai bus, not like the
Thai buses these days, Thai buses these days are fantastic - people say what are you talking about.
I've been there, it's not fantastic, this was 40 years ago, and this really hot and cramped small seat for two,
and there's usually three in there plus a chicken or pig or something else, I don't know what else,
cramped up for hours after hours after hours, and finally got to this monastery where I was
supposed to be going to, I rememer the time, 5:45 in the evening and checked-in, there was two monks there,
"Welcome, you can stay here but you've got 15 minutes to take a quick bath because at 6:00
we all have to meditate for 4 hours, no moving."
"What?! I've been on the road all day, I'm tired, I'm not going to be able to handle that!"
But...the wisdom of my practice kicked in, I think I've said this a couple of weeks ago,
the story of moving the wheelbarrows of earth, if you haven't heard that story it's in
Opening the Door of Your Heart, one of the first books which I wrote,
It's a story of how as a young monk I have to move earth from
9 o'clock in the morning to 9 o'clock in the evening for 3 days because my teacher wanted
it to be moved. It's really hard work, really heavy labour, but you don't mind.
I was fit and healthy, I'm fit and healthy now. It finished, and that night Ajahn Chah went
to another monastery and the second monk, he's the head monk now, said,
"You put it in the wrong place, move it." Another 3 days of hard work.
I can handle that..but you get very dirty, and just sweaty, and mosquitos,
you got both hands on the wheelbarrow, you can't keep the
misquitos off you, you're sweating, and oh the
mosquitos they really have a great lunch
when you're working like that, so after
6 days, finished at last.
That night my master Ajahn Chah
came back and the following morning said,
"Why have you moved the earth over there?
I thought I told you to move it in that other spot.
MOVE IT!" Another 3 days of hard physical labour.
In the mosquito-ridden sweaty jungles.
Those people who worked for the Japanese in
the Second World War, I know what they felt like.
Honesty. Really hard work, actually, they were,
we were malnourished as well.
You should see photos of me in those days,
nothing like now, you wouldn't recognise me, honestly
from what I look like today.
Being a bit fat today is just balancing what I did
when I was young, it's fair. [laughs]
Anyway, really hard work, and when it came to
the next day, 6 days already passed and
3 more days of hard work were in front of me,
I started complaining. I was exhausted, tired, had enough.
I complained, I always say, it was great in those
days because there were hardly any other Westerners there.
Just working with the Thai monks and the
Laotian monks, so you could swear in English.
I thought no-one would understand you.
But even though they never understood any English
just they could pick up your body language,
you were really suffering.
And that was when one of the monks,
I forget who it was, but whoever you are,
thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
for what you taught me because he said to me,
"pushing the wheelbarrow is easy,
thinking about it is the hard part."
He got me, he nailed me.
I was thinking about it, that was the hard part of
pushing a wheelbarrow for another three days.
Doing it is easy, and so, thank you, thank you, thank you,
I stopped thinking about it and it became fun again.
We had races with the other monks, who'd get there first.
You know, your turn to go on the shovel,
putting earth into the wheelbarrow,
oh sorry, did I throw it a bit hard?
Oh sorry. On purpose of cause.
Just having fun and games, messing around.
But anyway, I am pretty playful.
I went to a conference in Vietnam a couple of years ago,
and if you go to conferences, big organised conferences,
the organisers want you to see some of the sights.
I don't like being a tourist but you had no choice.
So I was in the middle of Vietnam somewhere,
to these lakes and underground tunnels and stuff,
where you go through in a barge,
fascinating beautiful place but on the way back...
Actually, weird, I was representing Singapore,
not Australia, so I was in the Singapore boat
and there was another Singapore boat,
we had the Theravada monks in our boat,
and the Mahayana monks in the other boat,
so I looked at them and said
"Right, a race, who's better, the Mahayana or the
Theravada? [laughter]. Those are the two parts
of Buddhist so we had a race between
Mahayana and Theravada. I was in the Theravada
boat paddling for all I could and the Mahayana
monks were paddling really hard as well just to
see who would win, and of course it's obvious,
the Theravada would win, it's obvious,
if you know anything about Buddhism,
because the Mahayana, they are Boddhisatvas,
they even let other people get to Enlightenment
before they do, so they made us get to the
finishing line before they did, that's their tradition [laughter].
Just playing around. Monks have a lot of fun.
We do really stupid things sometimes but it's good fun.
Religion can be far too serious and I just really
rebel against serious religion.
But anyway, this was where I learnt
how to have fun, because I was exhausted
moving those wheelbarrows but
instead of thinking about it I just did it.
And all the tiredness vanished.
It's like this evening,
all the tiredness vanishes when you stop thinking about it.
Thinking about the future, worrying about it,
because most of your energy gets wasted in thinking.
If you are tired, if you've had a really busy day,
for goodness sake, you can't afford to think!
And complain...and worry... and get afraid..
and plan this..and plan that...
Your brain is exhausted, give it a break!
But what do people do when they're tired,
they get grumpy, they don't know how just to be.
They always tend to think too much
and that is the most important reason why people are tired.
Thinking way too much rather than just doing it.
I don't know what you're going to do this weekend
so don't just think about it, just do it.
Tell that to your husband who has to clean out
the garaga - "I'm busy"
Say, "don't think about it husband, just do it" [laughter]
You've got to go and have a biopsy.
Don't just think about it because you get
really exhausted thinking "oh.....is it cancer? I'm going to die.."
Don't just think about it, just do it.
Even dying itself, dying is okay, just don't think about it,
just do it. [laughter]
The thinking about it is the problem
but don't actually do it on purpose, just when it happens.
That's one of the reasons why I learnt that much
of tiredness is the physically exhaustion which
you can't do too much about, actually you can do
something about it, but the major part of tiredness
is the mental, emotional, tiredness.
Emotional tiredness is because you're trying way too hard.
I don't know why you're trying.
Sometimes people try because, "oh I have to." No you don't.
"But, but, my boss expects me to do some work."
As long as he thinks you're doing some work
that's good enough for the boss [laughter].
How many of you read, I love reading cartoons,
the Dilbert cartoon. I remember that Wally,
in the Dilbert cartoons Wally is this guy in the office,
you only ever see him carrying a cup of coffee from the left to
the right, the right to the left, he never does any work,
he just carries the coffee backwards and forwards,
and it appears like he's doing some work,
that's why he keeps his job.
Maybe that's why I keep my job, appearance. [laugher]
No anyway, so there's another lovely cartoon
which I saw the other day, rambling again,
somebody sent it to me and it's a wonderful one
to talk about - why people worry about death.
Just don't worry, it hasn't happened yet,
don't think about it, don't worry about the future.
And this cartoon was of Peanuts, you know
Snoopy and Charlie Brown, those wonderful characters.
And honestly, read those comics, because you get far more
sense out of those comics than you ever do
out of editorials or other news articles.
They're far more insightful.
And this Peanuts, this Charlie Brown and his dog Snoopy,
must have been on vacation somewhere,
they were on a pier and they were sitting there
enjoying the afternoon, this beautiful view,
just mountains and lakes and waters,
having a beautiful afternoon there,
and Charlie Brown says to his dog Snoopy,
"You know Snoopy, all of us one day will die."
And Snoopy, this great philosopher,
he really is wise dog, much wiser than human beings,
Snoopy says, "True, one day all of us will die,
but most days all of us won't die." [laughter]
What a wise thing to say. Yeah, one day you'll die but most days
all of us won't. [laughter]
So why are you getting so negative?
So don't think about it, because thinking about
those things, that more than anything else, is what tires us.
So you get your kids trying to get good scores in TER, don't think about it!
Doesn't matter that much, if you can do well in that fine...
If it's natural, if you're naturally gifted then
fine but don't push yourself too hard for goodness sake.
Some parents get really upset at me for that but I want those kids to have
emotional intelligence, to feel loved and
respected even if they don't do well in those examinations.
As I keep saying, half of your children, all the people here today, half of
your children will be below average intelligence.
Come on, it's logical, it has to be that way,
half of your children will be below
average intelligence, it has to be, that's what average means!
If you're all Einsteins, half of the Einsteins
have to be below average. [laughter]
But what do you think - "oh not not my kids, their kids, okay, but not mine!"
So look, give your kids a break,
let them be, because if you take the pressure
off your kids at at early age,
they won't get so tired and they will develop
the emotional intelligence which I saw
in those Down's Syndrome people.
Beautiful people. They couldn't do sums,
they couldn't be electricians, they could be a monk.
They felt, they were sensitive, and they had
these beautiful relationships with each other.
Brothers and sisters, institutionalised,
but really really kind. I saw that.
Now what type of person do you want to be?
Your kids to be? They weren't tired, they had fun.
And when we accept ourselves for what we are,
instead of..going back to your kids,
don't push them, let them just develop,
nurture them, encourage them, inspire them,
but who knows what they will be in this life?
They're not all going to go to University
and it's terrible that everyone has to go to
University - there's so much more to the world
and life! So many people in this world,
University kills them.
There was a graffiti which I remember outside
the philosophy department,
no, this was actually outside the physics lab in Cambridge.
Graffiti in those days, you'd actually go looking
for it because it was really profound.
And that was - "exams - kill by degrees".
It's a wondeful pun - they kill by degrees.
They kill learning, they kill the excitement
of investigating knowledge, we have to be
tested and graded - who gets the best.
It actually kills emotional intelligence,
academic insitutitions, mostly, maybe they've
changed somewhere, most of them them they
kill that ability to explore and also to cooperate
with each other, because scores are all personal,
you have to compete against your best friends.
And of course that causes a lot of tiredness.
A lot of "you have to live up to something you can't be."
That is a stress of life. Me, I don't have any stress giving public talks.
Years and years and years ago I worked it out, so simple!
That if I give a public talk and you guys like it, wonderful! I get so much joy
seeing you happy and see I can actually help you and change your lives.
I'm really happy if my talks are really well received.
But I'm even more happy if you don't like them!
Because then you can live me alone and I can spend more time in my cave
and just enjoy my time, retire, because you don't like my talks,
you've heard all the old jokes before, all the stories before,
so none of you actually come here, brilliant!
That actually is my trick, is my stratgy. It did not work!
I decided to write all my stories in books, so you don't have to come back anymore.
I have to keep telling them until you get so bored that you won't come back.
But it doesn't work... You keep coming back for more.
You must be all masochists [chuckles].
But no.. the point was, I don't care! Either way life is good!
You succeed, you don't succeed.
But the trouble is the pressure is on you in this world - you only have one idea of success.
Or limited ideas of what being a successful person is.
I want to try and make more ideas of success, broaden it.
Even if you're living out in the streets, you're living out in the street happily.
Is that success?
Sometimes people think, "oh that poor person"
You ask the person and they say, "No, I'm free, I don't have to worry about.."
It's a bit cold maybe.. Have you lived out in the street?
I remember just in the hippie years, camping out under bridges.
I remember as a monk, one of the most wondeful times I had as a monk
was when we had to leave the monastery in in Thailand after 5 years,
you had your basic training, out, out, out, go!
And we had to just walk and eveything I owned I carried with me.
It wasn't that much, you could walk, it was light. All my possessions
were on my back and it never ached. And it was a beautiful feeling of freedom,
like being a bird, and you could be a bird as a human being,
and every crossroad I came to you could go any directions you wanted,
you had no pressure on you to get anywhere, to achieve anything,
you had no deadlines, no appointments, you just "that's a nice direction, I'll go there."
You had this wonderful ability to sleep anywhere, in a rice field, in a paddock.
The best place, my teacher said to sleep as a monk at that time was in the
cremation grounds. The reason was that Thai people were so scared
of ghosts you'd be guaranteed a peaceful evening if you went there.
But if you go anywhere else they'd always come asking you
questions or whatever, so the cremation grounds were the favourite
places to go sleep at night.
Everyone else was sleeping there as well - all the corpses [chuckles]
It's a very nice place to have a sleep.
But anyway, there was a beautiful feeling, you had no pressure on you.
So much freedom wherever you wanted to go.
And in the morning you'd go to any village and get enough to eat on the alms round.
You didn't need any money, just your alms bowl.
The beautiful feeling of freedom, and even though you walked a long distance
and it was hot, you never felt tired emotionally because you hardly
thought because there was nothing to think about.
What do you think about? Your worries.
Where you have to be, how you're going to get there.
We waste so much time and energy worrying about the future which is
why if you are to overcome tiredness and it's a big problem for you,
one of the things is please learn how to keep your mind efficient.
Doing life is easy, thinking about it is the hard part.
Living with a partner is easy, if you think about it, it drives you crazy.
Honestly, just in Thailand they were saying,
"Oh, my husband keeps yapping at me, he's really nasty to me."
I say again, if your husband comes home and he's always nasty to you,
says all these bad things remember why you were born with two ears,
one to go in, one to go out, don't keep anything!
Because when you keep it, that's called thinking about it,
you let it go immediately.
The ability to let go of stuff which is not necessary, that's the secret of overcoming tiredness.
Let go of thinking, just do it.
Let go of the future, you're exhausted worrying about what's going to happen next.
And let go of the past - I don't know if I told this a couple of weeks ago but
a very wonderful compliment which I got, 2-3 weeks ago I did my annual
visit to the Cancer Wellness Association, they started off in this old house in Cottesloe,
and the government, good on the Western Australian government, they actually put a
lot of money into building a huge campus, everything to do with cancer,
so there you will find the Melanoma Society, the Prostate Cancer Society,
the Breast Cancer Society, and the general wellness association,
just all in one area, which is brilliant. And I go there every year.
And when I went there, I was reminded, my 26th year going there,
it's a long time, 26 years, and they said the reason we always invite you back,
usually the first talk of the season, the first talk of the year,
to get it started in a good way, they said 26 years ago there was a girl there,
a woman, she had cancer, she got into remission but she always worried
what would happen if it came back, and no counselor could help her,
and then this monk comes along, and tells the story of the other
great philosopher, I told already about Snoopy, the American philospher,
the greatest philosopher of the last century. But there was even an earlier English philosopher
I really really respect, if you like philosophy check out one of the best philosophers
who's ever been written about called Winnie the Pooh [laughter]
Now the other philosophers who teach in universities there's just full of too many words,
they never get to the heart of it! And there's Winnie the Pooh,
one of my favourite stories, it would've been in Opening the Door of Your Heart,
I actually wrote to Disney who has the copyright for Winnie the Pooh now
and they said "absolutely no!" Because Disney is so commercial
they won't allow anybody, even though it's a tiny tiny little bit from that book
Winnie the Pooh, but anyway the story was which I told 26 years ago
at the Cancer Wellness Association, the story was about Winnie the Pooh and
little Piglet walking through the forest when there was a storm and twigs were
coming down, branches were coming down, and then trees started getting uprooted.
Storms are dangerous. You shouldn't be out in a storm in a forest and so Piglet
was really afraid and his fear got so huge he turned to Winnie the Pooh and said
"I can't go any longer! I can't walk any longer! I'm so afraid."
"Why?" said Winnie the Pooh.
"I'm so afraid that a tree might fall when we are underneath it!"
Which was a possibility... And Winnie the Pooh shot back,
which showed what a great philosopher he was, if he didn't have so much hair he
could've been a Buddhist monk [laughter]
He shot back with, "what would happen if a tree fell when we were not underneath it?"
And that was the end of the fear. Because all fear is looking into the future
with a negative mind, thinking of all the things which will go wrong
with a fault-finding mind, that's called fear. The opposite is hope, looking at the
future with a positive mind, what might go right,
and you would have noticed in your life, if you fear something, it's more likely
to happen, with hope, what you hope for is more likely to happen.
So when I told that story to this girl 26 years ago, I answered her question.
What would happen if the cancer came back?
The answer was - what would happen if it didn't come back?
It never came back, and that's why they keep inviting me there.
I come back but the cancer doesn't [laughter]
Now you can understand, analyse that a little deeper,
it's obvious, when you look at it a bit deeper, if you're worried about a cancer,
"what would happen if it came back?? will it come back?"
you're getting tense, you're getting worried, the sort of things, the sort of stress which
causes cancer, you are just putting into place. But if you think, what happens if it doesn't,
you don't worry about it, which means you're more relaxed, more healthy, and
the chances are the cancer is not going to come back.
You increase the chances of success, good health, happiness,
and also you don't get so tired, worrying about what will happen.
Deeper, this is meditation teachings but it's brilliant teachings -
"two parts to the human mind", this is why people get tired.
I call it the doing and the knowing. If you've been to any of my meditation
teachings you will know this, it's a very powerful way of looking at the human mind.
The doing mind is what reacts, it's reacting to what I'm saying,
thinking about it, saying, "oh that's good" or "that's rubbish",
that reaction is called doing. Planning, remembering,
figuring out things, initiating action, deciding to walk,
figuring out what you're going to do when you leave here, what you're going to do
on the weekend, all that is part of the doing mind.
The other part of the mind is just what knows.
The passive consciousness, just being aware,
feeling the itch on your arm, feeling the coolness of this room,
hearing the sound of the traffic in the distance.
Just knowing. Now, once you know the difference
between those two parts of the human mind it won't take you long to notice
that most of your mental energy, over 90% of it,
goes into doing stuff, reacting. Which means you've hardly got anything
left just to know, to be aware, to feel. Which is why so many people,
they can't even see the stars at night, even when they're up,
they're just doing too much. They can't feel the wind,
they don't know when it rains, they're too busy doing something else,
they're not alive, and they're also very very tired,
doing far too much, being far too little.
What happens, if instead of actually thinking you just "are", just feeling,
feeling the wind, feeling the cold, feeling the heat, walking back to the
car with your shoes off, feeling the stone or the grass under your feet.
You feel alive, but not just feeling alive,
you are feeding energy into knowing, taking it away from doing so much.
When you put energy back into passive awareness -
knowing, mindfulness - tiredness starts to go. You wake up because the
mental tiredness is the knower with very low energy.
Put energy into the awareness and you'll feel awake.
A good example of that is having a cup of coffee.
Before you have a cup of coffee you're miserable.
Have a cup of coffee, you can feel more, you're awake, you're alive,
you can see things, you can hear things, you can think.
That's unnatural energy, it's still energy, but imagine that energy was natural.
So you wake up alive. When the mind is energised,
it energises the body, that's why what I was doing 10 minutes after
I was teaching you in the meditation session, that's why usually I give guided
meditation almost all the way through, but I was so exhausted, so tired,
if you want to know why I'll tell you what I've been doing the last two weeks
and today, if you want to know why it was there, the reason, I should be exhausted,
I taught you for 20 minutes, and then right, no more doing anything,
kept my mind really still, getting energy pouring back into awareness,
you wake up alive. Wow, that's incredible,
feeling the wind.. Can you hear that? Feel it? Wow..
Most people wouldn't be able to hear that, but you did.
Energy starts to come back, tiredness vanishes.
Heard a story at a global conference, a psychologist, he's a good psychologist,
but a bit crazy, why you have to pay people to tell you this is absolutely ridiculous.
His therapy, his method of therapy, which is very very popular,
you go to his place and pay a lot of money and he tells you to go have a walk in nature.
And it works! People's problems disappear, he makes a lot of money,
their problems disappear, that's it. Smart guy.
But why is it - walking in nature, or being by the ocean by yourself,
not swimming or surfing, just sitting there. When you go to a forest and just do nothing,
why is that therapeutic? Simply because energy is going back
into mindfulness, into knowing, you're not doing so much,
which means that your tiredness is going, it's vanishing, and when that
tiredness vanishes, your health, mental, emotional, physical,
increases enormously. You're healing just because in nature you
can't do very much. Check it out this weekend.
You've got a choice - go shopping or go into the forest.
And check what you feel like afterwards. One is so much doing you come back tired.
You go to a forest, or by a beach, a quiet place by yourself,
go into King's Park or whatever, walk around the river quietly,
not really doing much, and you find your tiredness vanishes. Please for goodness sake,
give yourself a break. Too many people getting cancers,
too many partners breaking up. Too many kids just not being able to
connect with their parents, because their parents can't connect with them,
because they're too tired. Not being able to listen because they're
too dull. For goodness sake understand tiredness is one of the biggest scourges
of our modern age, and there's many many ways, especially what you're heard tonight,
can overcome that tiredness and I've proved it just by giving a talk, for 50 minutes,
even though by all reasonable people it should have been impossible.
Thank you for listening. Sadhu!! Sadhu!! Sadhu!!
Okay, that's energy!
Very good. What have we got here? From Ireland, France and London!
Wow, Europe. How do we deal with the tiredness with
people telling us we're wrong, or that stuff we believe in is wrong?
Just tell them - yeah you're right, I am wrong. When I went to Malaysia
a lot, this is one of the problems. In Malaysia there are also many Christians,
and these are the evangelical ones, the ones that want to convert everybody..
And so there was a problem in Malaysia, also in Singapore,
there's an old Buddhist man, been Buddhist all his life, but his grandkid or his son had become
an evangelical. Everyone else was Buddhist. Or even Hindu, or whatever.
And the son would think, "My father will go to hell if he doesn't convert.."
So he'd go with his friends, and his pastor, by the bedside of this really sick and dying
person, and keep harassing them until they converted, and it was such a painful experience
that even I think the Singapore government made rules against that.
But someone asked me - what was your advice? If that's my son, my grandson,
I'm dying, he comes with his pastor, his friends and they start talking about
the Bible, Hallelujah, and I'm going to go to hell if I don't convert,
and Jesus is the only way, what do I do?
Don't try to convince them they're wrong. You can't. Convert!
Tell them, "oh yeah that makes a lot of sense, grandson, okay I will take
Jesus as my saviour." And they go Hallelujah, Hallelujah,
and then they leave you alone. And as soon as they've walked out
of the door, you can convert back again. [laughter] Become a Buddhist.
That's my practical advice. So if someone says, "you're wrong,
you're wrong, you're wrong." "Yeah, you're right, I agree with you,"
"I'm wrong, okay". Then they leave you alone. And as soon as they leave you alone,
"no that's rubbish, I was right all along" [laughter]
Otherwise it's impossible. I say this even with partners, whoever you're living with,
you should know by now. [Phone rings] There we go, music to
give an answer to a talk, that's fine, that happens, anyway it's not your fault,
it's your mobile phone's fault, so don't get angry at you,
spank your mobile phone, or whatever, put your mobile phone in detention.
What was I talking about? Oh yeah, about being wrong.
There is no way in the world you will ever be able to convince your partner
that he's wrong, no way. And you should have found that out
by now, how long have you been living with that guy?
You can't do it. Even if you were, say, the Prime Minister of Germany,
what's her name again? Angela Merkel!
Incredibly smart woman, very powerful, I'm not sure if she's married,
but I bet she always loses arguments with her husband, there's no way she can
convince her husband he's wrong. And Obama cannot convince Michelle,
his wife, she's wrong, it's impossible. Doesn't matter how powerful, intelligent,
you are, it cannot be done. So don't try it. Many husbands say
"Yes dear, yes dear, I agree with you dear," and they go off and do whatever they want. [laughter]
It's true, so get used to that, wives. So anyway, we developed,
if you haven't heard this yet, I always tell this story when I do weddings,
another wedding tomorrow afternoon. There's no way you can convince someone
they're wrong, so how can you actually make a decision and actually get on
in life but not always having to submit. That really sucks doesn't it?
He's always right, why do I always have to agree with him?
Why does she always have to be right? So the calendar method, the solution,
which allows people to live harmoniously with their partners, the calendar method
is that when you have an argument, don't argue who's right and wrong!
Let the calendar decide! On the odd days of the month she is right. [laughter]
The girl is always right on the odd days of the month. On the even days he is right.
So that's fair. Today is the 19th, so today all the girls are right! Yay!
Be careful, tomorrow he is right. [laughter] That way you don't have to argue anymore.
The calendar decides who's right without any arguments and you can make a decision.
It's never that bad if the other person makes a decision, not you, at least it's fair.
And people have already figured out, you girls have already figured out,
you get more days right a year than he does. Only about four or five,
but guys, give it to them, it's worth it. The trouble is, people say,
what happens if you're in a gay relationship? [laughter] Then you've got me stumped,
it doesn't work. Both of you are right on one day, the next day both of you are wrong. [laughter]
Anyway, when people tell you you're wrong I just forget about it, just let them tell you,
just do it, don't think about it, and afterwards you realise
they can tell you whatever they want, it's just rubbish.
[Next Question] Do you think there's a link between tiredness, and the oxygen
we breathe, pollution or how you breathe?
There is a little bit of a connection there because oxygen gives you
physical energy and if it's not much oxygen, or it's polluted, or something like that,
of course that will impact the amount of oxygen you can breathe in but usually
the lungs compensate so if there's not much oxygen coming in you breathe in more.
That's what happened to me when I went to Bhutan.
It was very clear air but there's hardly any oxygen when you go up to Tiger's Nest,
because it's very very high up. At the bottom of that hill
someone had an energy bar, a little energy bar like you can buy here,
a Mars bar or something, but when they got to the top it ballooned out.
They showed it to me, it was like a balloon, because the air temperature at the top
and bottom was so different that the pressure inside at the bottom was just
ordinary pressure but by the time we got up to the top it was a balloon.
So that's how high it was, and there was hardly any oxygen there, but what happens
is that the lungs breathe in more. So yeah, there's a little bit between
the tiredness and the oxygen but not that much because the body usually
knows how to compensate. It doesn't know how to compensate
when you think too much..
Dear Ajahn (from London), what can a person do when they have lost everything in their life
and have torturous anxiety about the future.
Remember me, I have lost everything
in my life. I've lost my degree, it doesn't count for anything anymore.
I've lost all my money, haven't got a cent. I had some money when I was young.
What else did I lose? I lost girlfriends, money, possessions, everything.
I lost all my past, all my memories. I lost all my fears.
I've lost my security. I don't have superannuation. I'm not allowed
according to how monks agree, to take a pension.
I haven't got anything. What would happen if you didn't
feed me tomorrow or the day after? Ah! Now losing everything is not
the problem, sometimes it gives you a lot of freedom, you can live simply,
learn to live simply. The torturous anxiety, now that,
you've lost possessions, but now you're allowing your peace
to be lost as well. Recently we had a break-in at Bodhinyana monastery.
They pinched some chainsaws. Straightaway, I said they can pinch the
chainsaws, they can steal that, but they're not going to steal our
peace and compassion. We're not going to worry about that. In fact it turned out
to be really good because those chainsaws were quite old and the
insurance allowed us to get much better ones. [laughter]
So if ever that thief is around, come up here and we'll say thankyou.
I shouldn't say that but it actually worked out good in the end.
They can come into your house and they can steal your possessions
but why allow them to steal your happiness as well?
You don't need to do that. So you may have lost all your physical
possessions, maybe lost your wife, or your kids, or something,
but you don't need to lose your happiness. That is losing your hope.
So what you can do is restore hope. See other people, sometimes when we
have these little groups, people in the same situation,
what's that called again? Therapy groups, peer support groups,
sometimes when we hear what other people have gone through, which is similar
to what we've gone through, it gives us hope instead of fear and anxiety.
That's such an important thing to create in your life - hope.
So even if you haven't been able to find a partner in life, don't give up,
keep on going. If you fear you won't, then you will not. You can always have hope,
"yes it's possible", then you're opening the doors to success. So always look into
the future with a positive mind and then your last experience will never take
away your hope and where there's hope there is success.
So thank you to those people. It's 9 o'clock now. So is there any questions from the floor?
Good, great, bye bye. [laughter]
Okay, we're going to bow down to the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha.
I'm sorry if I can't say hello to you, because I have to rush off and go
and teach down in Jhana Grove for a nice retreat.