Buddhism And Evil | Dharma Talk With Ajahn Brahm

Ajahn Brahm talks about understanding evil in the context of Buddhist practice. Ajahn Brahm is a popular Buddhist teacher to a growing international audience of people keen to learn meditation and develop a deeper spiritual understanding. He is also the founding father of an emergent Australian forest tradition of Buddhism.

Transcript

There we go.

So over the many years which I have taught at this place and all the other places where I give teachings,

We always try and teach something new,

Something a little bit different.

And so to this time of the year,

Towards the end of our teaching season,

Just before we go on our range retreat,

You're always struggling to find a new topic to talk about.

So just before I came out of the monks' quarters,

I looked at my friend,

Ven.

Bhutta,

And I said,

What should I talk about?

And I looked at him and I said,

Yes,

I've got it.

This evening I'm going to talk about Buddhism and evil.

And it's nothing to do with looking at him.

But I thought,

What a wonderful little topic to talk about.

Because if you talk about evil,

Then many people get interested in that.

Why is that?

Say Buddhism and good,

Oh,

Boring.

I don't know why that is the case.

I do always remember,

Even as a kid,

When I went to Madame Tussauds,

The Wax Works Museum in London,

I saw more people were going to the,

What was it,

The dungeons,

The torture exhibition,

Much more than seeing all the famous people.

And I also see when you go to some of the Buddhist temples,

And they go,

All the depictions of what happens when you go to hell.

And people get more interested in that than what happens in Nice in Heaven,

Because heaven is a bit boring.

People are very weird,

Aren't they?

Why is evil a much more interesting subject than other stuff?

And maybe because it's more close to home.

I don't know what you get up to when you're not in this place.

Maybe now and again people,

They talk about,

Oh,

You know,

The world is a battle between good and evil.

And even inside yourself,

A battle between the good and the evil.

And that is such an old Western concept whose use by date is well past.

Because sometimes people used to ask me,

Does Buddhism have an idea of evil?

No way.

There's no such thing as evil.

Instead we call it stupidity.

And that's something you can all know for yourself from time to time.

Just sometimes we do stupid things which is not in our own interest,

Not in the interest of others,

Not in the interest of anybody.

We do it,

It sounds like a good idea at the time,

We get into trouble for it afterwards.

It's not evil,

It's just a bit of delusion.

Or as one gentleman the other day said,

It's like everyone's a good person,

But they're a good person stuck in a bad system.

I really like that sort of,

That was actually Brian White's knowledge,

You know,

Where these things come from.

I don't get any acknowledgement when I say something smart,

But I try and acknowledge other people.

And I get acknowledged when I say something wrong.

But anyway,

Like good people stuck in bad systems and sometimes it means that we just get encouraged to do some things which a lot of times we regret afterwards.

Why did I do that?

It's a stupid thing to do.

Not so much as evil,

It's the fact that we make mistakes and those mistakes can be quite hurtful of other people.

And it's from that hurt is where what we take to be evil starts to grow.

The hurt gets worse and worse and worse,

Especially when we want to take revenge.

You started it.

No,

No,

You started it.

You hurt me,

Therefore I will hurt you.

And we get these terrible,

Terrible cycles of revenge.

And a lot of times,

Revenge is like,

It starts to kill people.

You know what the word evil,

If you spell it backwards,

It's the opposite of live.

It's almost like instead of evil,

Say oval.

No,

Not evil,

No,

Evil.

The opposite of love.

The opposite of just letting things be.

And letting things try and heal themselves.

In other words,

That when we try to,

It's your fault,

Or it's somebody else's fault,

Instead of just,

You know,

Say it's my fault either.

That all things are like blaming and trying to take revenge.

That blame game is a top of a talk I mentioned earlier.

And that blame game is a lot of times where we get to what we think,

You know,

Is revenge.

And if you ask anybody who does very,

Very bad things,

It's good people in a bad system where we think the only way to protect our happiness,

To solve the world,

Is actually by using such very,

Very gross force,

Violence,

Thinking that is going to be,

As they used to say,

The war which ends all wars.

And of course,

It never does.

It's delusion.

So if we understand what's really going on,

There's that thing as evil.

First of all,

It's the idea of misunderstanding that mistakes happen,

It's not a perfect world.

If a school was perfect,

Then the kids would have nothing to learn.

This life,

This world in which we live,

Is never going to be a utopia.

If it was,

You'd have a wonderful time,

But you'd learn nothing at all.

But we do have our problems and difficulties.

And this is the place in life where we do learn when things go wrong.

It is a challenge,

It's not evil,

It's a test on how we're going to respond to the difficulties which we do face in our life.

So we don't blame other people for setting the test too hard and too difficult.

Instead,

We're just blaming other people,

Just.

.

.

What did Ajahn Chah keep on saying?

I always remember this saying,

He said,

If you blame other people,

It's like having an itch on your head and scratching your bum.

Very down to earth sort of teaching.

Blaming other people,

Having an itch on your head and scratching your bum.

It's your husband's fault.

It's your wife's fault.

It's those Eastern states' fault.

It's Mr.

Trump's fault.

What it does is just make an extra problem for you.

You already had one and now you have two problems.

That's the blame game.

And of course a lot of time,

The blame game goes to ourself.

It's my fault.

What did I do that?

Oh,

I didn't mean it.

It's not like a good idea at the time,

I'm sorry.

A lot of times you can see you're not really looking at what's happening.

The delusion instead of learning from these things and growing from them.

If we can understand that that is a response,

A spiritual response,

For acknowledge,

For giving and learning.

There's no even acknowledgement first of all.

This is what the delusion is.

It just pushes things down,

It's somebody else's fault,

It's evil or whatever.

So we take a little bit of responsibility and we learn just from the mistakes of life.

And a lot of times when mistakes happen,

And they're very difficult mistakes sometimes,

This is actually the opportunities where we do have to really learn and grow and make it better next time.

So what happens,

You know,

With the knowledge,

For giving and learning principle,

Instead of blaming on evil people need to be destroyed,

It's all about like what we call pest control.

You know pest control,

How it works?

Something irritates you.

You know,

You start with the mosquitoes and you spray everything to kill the mosquitoes.

And then there's another pest you need to,

Like the mice.

So get rid of the mice,

Kill all the mice,

Bait everything.

And then it gets on to other people you don't like,

Husbands,

Exes,

Pest control.

People are not the same as us,

Whatever that is.

You find out that anything which irritates you,

We call pest control.

So you build walls between your country and another country to keep the pests out,

More pest control.

Or people who take advantage of your economy,

Put tariffs on them,

Pest control.

Can you see this whole idea of pest control is using some sort of violence,

Something,

To be able to stop being irritated by life.

But what I learnt in my Buddhist practice is mosquitoes only take a tiny bit of blood.

I can spare that,

It's not that much.

Mice,

Oh mice,

They're really,

Really cool.

They just run a little bit around,

They don't do any harm.

Spiders,

Spiders are my friends.

Do you like spiders?

Why do you try and get rid of spiders?

Because they keep all of the other flies out of your rooms and houses.

So spiders are also really nice.

I always remember that story,

I usually tell it when we're raising funds for something and being a religion,

We're always raising funds for something or other.

So that was the story of the suicidal spider.

When was the last time I told about the suicidal spider?

Did you know that even spiders sometimes get depressed?

But they don't have like a telephone line to call.

So many spiders become suicidal,

This particular spider.

Oh,

She was just born and I told the story recently.

Okay,

This spider was born and it made a nice little web in somebody's house.

And this,

The spider was very Buddhist,

Very mindful,

Very careful,

Took her time,

Didn't rush in the moment and constructed this amazing web.

Now it was just absolutely perfect and it was her home,

Her first house.

If that spider built like a real,

Like one of the brick and tile or whatever else you use to make your homes,

That would have been on the front cover of the spider equivalent to home and gardens.

It was architectural masterpiece and she put so much time into building it but once it was finished,

She put herself in the middle to take a rest and wait for the food to come.

Not Uber Eats,

You know,

Because this was just natural,

Way before people thought of home deliveries.

You wait there and soon as the fly comes in,

That's your lunch.

So exhausted resting,

Waiting for lunch to arrive,

Then the owner of the house saw in the corner of its room,

There was a spider web.

So she got the broom and she smashed the spider web to bits and that poor spider had to run for her life.

She only just escaped the broom and she ran,

Ran as fast as she could to the house next door,

Built another web.

Of course your second home is nowhere near as good as your first because you put more energy and love into it.

And she built another home and she just,

When she finished,

Rested in the middle of it and of course what happened?

Somebody else in that home,

A maid,

Saw the spider web in the middle of the corner,

Smashed it with a stick.

So that spider had to run away to another home.

And same thing happened to the third house.

Now how many houses have you built?

Imagine that happened to you.

You just finished a house,

You haven't even paid off the mortgage yet,

Smash.

And even worse,

Haven't had any lunch or anything to eat.

So that four,

Five,

Six,

Seven,

Eight houses.

The spider had some Chinese connection because the eight was a lucky number.

So tried number eight but didn't work.

Eight houses,

Eight webs it built and after the eighth web was destroyed,

Smashed to bits and just that close to dying,

That spider just started to recollect.

What's the point?

What's the point of putting all that effort into building a house when the equivalent of the banks foreclose you,

Take away your house,

The owner just smashes it to bits every time.

And what's the point?

No one,

And it's unfair,

The spiders don't harm you.

They just take food you don't want.

You know,

There's flies and the mosquitoes and all those other bugs.

You know,

They take them away for you and eat them.

They just stay in the corner of the house.

You don't live in the corner of the house.

You know,

They do.

You can't live together and get on together.

But the spider's experience was no one likes spiders.

And the spider's experience was every time it tries to build a house,

It gets almost attacked,

Almost killed.

So the spider started to experience what we know as human beings as post-traumatic stress.

Even the thought of a corner of a house made it sort of shake with fear and started sweating uncontrollably.

That's what PTS is.

You've been traumatized,

Come close to death and you know,

Even just thinking about building a web was impossible for her.

And she was so hungry she hadn't eaten at all.

She was homeless,

Rejected,

No one loved her,

Cold,

Unloved.

What's the purpose?

And she got so depressed that she thought the only thing she could do to overcome that suffering was to kill herself.

Suicidal spider was born.

And so what suicidal spider tried to do was to try and walk along the sidewalk under somebody's shoes to get squashed on purpose.

But every time it went under somebody's shoes,

It always got the spot between the heel and the sole.

So it decided to try and cross the freeway.

And as it crossed the freeway,

It always managed to get in between the wheels,

Never underneath her.

And suicidal spider got even more depressed,

Thinking to herself,

I can't even commit suicide properly,

There's nothing I can do.

So suicidal spider was walking down that road,

Just like a drunken person,

Not knowing where she was going,

Staggering around,

Crying,

And then,

Have you ever felt that someone is watching you?

So suicidal spider thought,

There's somebody watching me,

What is this?

And she turned around and there was this fattest,

Happiest spider you've ever seen in your life,

Sunning itself in the afternoon rays of the sun.

And the big fat spider was always compassionate and wise,

Like most big fat people are.

And the big fat happy spider said,

Oh,

What's wrong with you?

You look so sad.

And that was when the suicidal spider started telling everything about her short,

A short life of suffering and homelessness and lack of love and hunger,

And told all those webs she'd made,

And all the time she just escaped for the life,

Hungry,

Homeless,

Unloved.

And as suicidal spider was telling her story,

The big fat happy spider got out some tissues so that the suicidal spider could wipe her tears away.

Oh,

It was so desperately sad.

And at the end of her story,

The big fat happy spider said,

Listen,

Why don't you come and stay with me?

Where I live,

There's plenty of food,

Look at me.

I'm fat and I'm happy,

There's plenty of food for both of us,

Come and stay with me.

And suicidal spider said,

Hey,

How come,

How come that you are fat and happy?

How many spider webs have you built in your life,

Fat happy spider?

He said,

I only built one,

It's still there,

It catches lots of food,

Come and live with me.

Look,

I don't understand,

Said suicidal spider,

Where in this world,

Where in this world can you build a spider web which never gets torn down,

Never gets disturbed,

Always catches lots of food?

Where can you build a spider web where no one disturbs you?

In the donation box of the Buddhist Society of WA.

Someone's disturbing the spiders,

Stop putting coins in their lips.

That's a story the suicide spider.

But I don't know why I got into that one,

Totally off subject,

Evil.

So now the one,

Instead of getting,

Sort of blaming other people,

People don't love you,

Make yourself lovable,

There's always some places you can go.

So there's always lots of kind people in this world,

Which is amazing to know.

So sometimes it's give people a chance to be good.

It's amazing just how people rise to that occasion.

It's not stupid,

It's not people are evil.

Sometimes they just need to be given the chance to be good.

Oh,

Just for those of you who may be afraid of volunteering to actually to go and work in these prisons.

And in Kajarina we actually asked,

Anyone wants to volunteer there?

You learn so much and you give,

And have wonderful experiences.

One of those wonderful experiences which I had working in just Carnet Prison,

Many years ago,

That there's a couple of people that are there for drug offenses,

Selling drugs,

And drugs do terrible things to people.

But one of them,

Name was Nick,

And I always remember,

I'll never forget him,

When I went to go and do my little teaching there of an evening,

That he grabbed hold of me and took me to a big board in the school room,

Where we used to do the meditation teaching in those days.

A big board there,

And on the board were these cards written by primary school children.

And so where did these come from?

And he told me a few days beforehand,

He'd been invited to a local primary school.

Being here in West Australia,

I better be careful which one it was,

I won't tell you.

Even though it was many years ago.

Because the principal was going to do some courses to try and teach the primary school kids,

Up to year sixes,

The dangers of drugs.

What happens if you get involved in drugs,

Non medicinal drugs?

And this principal,

Just sadhu sadhu sadhu,

Just so wise,

She declined to get a professor from the university,

Or a doctor from some sort of hospital,

Who specialized in drugs,

Drug abuse,

Or any policeman.

She said,

Why not get somebody who is in jail,

Who knows firsthand what it's like to take drugs,

And to pay for drugs,

And to sell drugs.

So she managed to ask,

Kind of pissen from,

For two prisoners to come and teach the kids about what drugs are really like.

And that was Nick and one of his friends in jail.

And when I saw these cards,

The next day,

As people do do in primary schools,

They wanted to say thank you to Nick and his friend.

So they wrote all these cards from their hearts.

Thank you Nick,

I hope you get out soon.

When you do,

Please come and visit us,

We'll never take drugs.

Now I hear what it's like from someone who's really been there and experienced the pain and the suffering,

And just the stigmatism of being a drug dealer,

And all the pain,

The stuff you've gone through.

So we'll never do that,

Never,

Ever,

I promise Nick,

But please come and see us.

And this prisoner was weeping,

In real streams of tears just coming down his cheeks.

It meant so much to him that he could actually give back and do something.

He wasn't an evil person,

He was a person who'd done some terrible things.

And this was one very powerful way of paying it back.

And of course,

I,

No follow up,

We don't have resources,

You know,

To actually to,

You know,

To do control groups and this group and just follow on and how it works,

But I'm pretty sure intuition,

Feeling,

That those kids,

You know,

Probably learned much more from someone who'd been there and was suffering right there and then from taking drugs,

Much more than from any other so-called expert.

And thank you for that principle,

For having the guts and the courage to actually to do that.

So this is where there's no such thing as evil,

That sometimes people just get peer pressure,

They get caught,

They just get,

These things are available,

They just get dragged into places where they look back and they think,

Why did I do that?

It's a stupid thing to do,

But you know,

It's there,

It's done,

Instead of thinking these people are evil or bad.

I remember just some of the stuff I get up to as a monk,

It's a really good lifestyle.

You get to places where other people just don't gutter,

Which is one of the nice things.

It's not just sitting in your cave meditating all the time,

But you get some really interesting stuff.

And,

You know,

People are supposed to be really,

Really,

Really bad,

But you actually go and see them and just,

My goodness,

Just,

They're in the wrong place at the wrong time.

In Carnet Prison Farm,

Just over there,

There was this guy who came to see me.

He'd never been to my meditation class before,

And this guy was really huge.

And you know,

Scars all over him.

And he was Northern Irish.

He spoke with a sick Irish accent,

Belfast accent.

And this guy,

He came up and he said,

He confessed to me,

He'd murdered people.

He was a murderer.

And he said,

It was just his upbringing.

He told me,

He said,

And I can recall this,

It's in one of the books,

They open the door of your eyes,

Ooh,

He said he stabbed his first kid when he was about six years of age,

I think he said.

He was at school,

You know,

In that really poor part of Northern Ireland.

He was at school and one of the school bullies,

You know,

Asked him for the money he had for his lunch,

His dinner money.

And he said,

No,

I'm not giving you my dinner money.

And the school bully,

Much bigger than him,

Never asked again,

He just took out a knife and stabbed him in his arm.

This little six year old kid,

Sort of blood streaming out of his arm,

He ran to,

Out of the school yard,

To his father's house,

Just around the corner,

Father unemployed.

His father was home.

Took one look at his kid's wound.

You know what he did?

He didn't put any bandage on or call an ambulance.

He just went to the kitchen,

Got a knife out,

A kitchen knife out,

And told his son to go and stab the boy back.

He said that was my training,

My upbringing,

That's how I grew up.

And he killed many people.

And he said the reason he came to see me,

He said,

Because he had to tell me what happened the week before.

Because that was a prison farm.

They're not just grow vegetables,

Cows,

Sheep,

Pigs,

Chickens,

I don't know what else they do there.

They had to own slaughterhouse.

And he was the head slaughterer.

He said you had to fight other prisoners to get that job.

That was the top job,

Killing cows.

It's amazing,

Just,

You know,

To me that's ridiculous.

Violent people doing violent things.

How's that going to get them back into society afterwards?

But anyway,

That's what he was doing.

And anyway,

So he told me that day after day after day,

Week after week,

Just,

You know,

Slaughtering,

Had to wear these big boots,

Trudging in blood all day.

He said this particular day they were killing cows.

He said,

He said how it was done had these big strong stainless steel railings.

I've never seen it myself,

But,

And they just narrowed down to an entrance.

And there was a platform,

That's where he would stay,

With a stun gun.

And he said whenever the animals came in,

You know,

They were corralled in,

And just so they,

One by one,

They passed him,

One to stun,

Because they wouldn't stay still enough to be able to aim properly.

And once they were stunned,

They were still enough he could aim properly,

Second to kill.

First to stun,

Second to kill.

He'd been doing this for so long.

He said what changed his life?

He was an evil person,

Because something touched him,

Touched him so deeply.

A cow came in,

Unlike others,

It had its head down and walked voluntarily,

Didn't need to be prodded or pushed.

Like it was,

The only thing you could say,

Mindful,

Okay?

Just purposely one foot after another positioned itself into the place where it would be killed.

And then looked up at the guy,

Looked straight into his eyes,

And he said,

I can't say what he said,

Because he swore.

You know,

Really just,

You know,

The F word many times,

A rough guy.

That cow stared at me.

And he didn't know what to do,

Because that never happened before.

And as he was staring at the cow,

The cow was staring with him,

He said he saw something which was just totally blew his mind,

Stopped him from doing anything,

Because cows have huge eyes,

And he said,

Huge eye there,

And he saw water start to well up above the lower eyelid,

More and more water,

And it was too much for the eyelid to hold.

It dribbled over the eyelid and down the cow's cheek.

And he saw the same in the other eye as well.

Water got more and more until that dribbled over.

The cow was crying.

And he said,

This is actually what he told me,

God's own,

The F word truth,

He said.

He wanted me to believe his experience,

And it was true.

He threw down the gun,

And he said,

The guards can do whatever they like to him,

But that cow ain't dying.

He said,

He's a vegetarian now.

That's what you learn in prisons,

Incredible experiences of people brought up on violence,

Thinking that violence is the only way,

Thinking that's the way,

The only way you can actually,

To protect yourself,

Inside a good person.

What most other people say was evil,

The things which he did.

But you can see that there's a possibility there.

You know what,

In Buddhism,

Buddha nature,

There's no human being I've ever met,

And I've met some pretty rough people,

Animals,

Tigers,

Snakes,

No one,

And I haven't got that good part inside of them.

You focus on that.

It's amazing,

Just you focus on the good part of them,

The kind part of them,

And then you actually find,

Just,

It's there in abundance.

There is no one I've ever seen who's evil,

Just a person who hasn't been touched,

Who's been put in a bad system and can't find their way out,

Who's been put in a place of great difficulty where they think they need to fight to survive,

And sometimes they do need to fight to survive,

It's just a tough time,

Sometimes they run,

But you give them a bit of a chance afterwards,

Once they've escaped,

Once they're in a place of safety.

It's incredible just how they can become wonderful people.

People you think,

How on earth did that happen?

People can be touched.

There's always a place inside everything.

I don't believe that there's things called psychopaths who can't be touched,

They just haven't got to that place where they can feel touched yet.

And I just,

One of my,

Okay I'm going a bit strange now,

But I remember having this very vivid dream many years ago when I was,

I think,

Just first a monk.

It's nothing to do with my past or past life,

But it was something which gave me a deep understanding of what it must be like to be tortured,

To be in deep pain,

To be just so hurting that you cannot stand it any longer.

It was just a dream,

A dream of just being assaulted,

Not physically,

Not sexually,

By some boys bigger than I,

Bigger than me,

And feeling that they were,

This was just a dream,

It wasn't real,

It never happened,

And being sort of stabbed so many times in my body by these bigger people,

So many times until I couldn't stand it any longer,

And the pain was so unendurable that you went,

I remembered myself going so deep inside myself,

So deep inside until you can't feel the pain anymore,

To a place deep inside,

And being almost like in a coma in a catatonic state,

Until to be drawn out from that needed this incredible kindness,

This love,

Which gave me the idea of safety.

It was all right,

You were safe,

You can come out again.

And it took such a long time,

And it's just a dream,

That's all it was,

But a vivid dream,

And to be brought back again just by this wonderful kindness,

Softness,

Which was conveyed in a voice of a very wonderful loving person,

To bring somebody out from their hiding where they defend themselves at all costs.

That degree of kindness and love,

Which gives the safety,

Which gives the sense of it's okay to come out.

I know that many people,

Especially to young people,

Who go through life looking for love,

They get their hearts broken,

They get let down,

They get disappointed,

They get cheated,

And sometimes they feel that the only alternative is to maybe not go as deep as I was in that dream until you couldn't feel anything,

You were just hiding deep inside of oneself.

But go deep inside that you don't want to take any chances anymore,

To live,

To put a concrete bunker around your heart so you can't feel anything.

That's no way to live.

You can't live in that bunker for too long,

You have to come out.

And when you do come out,

You find there are some wonderful people in this world.

Yes,

You get hurt from time to time,

You get pain,

That is part of life.

So much so I call it growing pain.

That's what they used to call it.

You learn from it,

You grow from it,

And you find out that it doesn't sort of,

Won't happen again,

If you learn from it,

You grow from it,

And then eventually just,

You know,

You look back upon your life at the end of your period in this incarnation.

Yes,

A lot of pain,

But a lot of growth,

A lot of joy,

A lot of tears,

Much laughter,

Much very touching intimate moments in our life which we will cherish forever,

Disappointment too.

Thank you for all of it,

Because we grow from this,

It's how we learn.

The end of our life,

It was worth it.

We grew so much.

If this world was perfect,

If everything went your way,

We only had wonderful relationships,

Lots of money,

No problems with councils,

No problems trying to get people to come on your committees,

No problems raising money,

No problems carrying the books through customs,

There is something missing from life,

There's something not quite right,

That'd be like a heaven realm.

I always used to say,

Heaven realm is a great place for a holiday,

But if you want to learn and grow,

This world,

The human realm,

Is the best.

Pain,

Disappointment,

But also a lot of learning,

A lot of opportunity for compassion and kindness,

Which moves us.

Would there be any reason for compassion and kindness when everyone's having a good time?

It's when there's pain,

That is when we need the nurses.

It's when there's disappointment.

That's where we need the encouragement to see the sunsets.

It's when there is the death.

That's where we need the similes of like the concert,

Such a wonderful performance,

Thank you so much,

As you clap and clap and then it finishes.

It never finishes.

The joy,

The experience,

The love,

The meaning of it stays with you.

You learn,

You grow.

There is no such thing as evil.

If you live life backwards,

Yeah,

That's what evil means,

L-I-V-E,

Backwards.

If you live it forward,

It's live,

Alive.

It's not just the way you want it.

It's not just all happiness and laughter,

But it is life.

It's how we learn and grow and love and become wise.

Not evil,

But life.

So there we go.

That's my talk,

Buddhism and Evil.

It wasn't very evil,

Was it?

No,

Okay.

Okay,

So who have we got here?

Probably,

We usually get some questions,

See if we got a question from the Pope or the Archbishop or God.

That'd be good,

Wouldn't it?

So here's,

Okay,

The first of all,

St.

Peter from the Pearly Gates.

Marla from,

No,

Sorry,

I'm joking.

From USA.

Is being good instead of evil still from a sense of self?

I do feel good being moral,

But is it a false sense of self?

You don't say you,

Saying I feel good is nothing wrong with feeling good.

It just,

Understand it won't last.

Because what I often tell to monks and says,

How you feeling today?

Say,

Oh,

I'm feeling quite good today and I say,

It won't last.

It's true.

You saw me last week,

Coughing all over the place,

Almost dead.

But you know,

Sickness doesn't last.

Neither does health.

Oh,

It's nice to see you got well,

Ajahn Brahm,

Don't worry,

It won't last.

But the whole idea of a sense of self,

Yeah,

This is actually where a lot of evil comes from.

Because I want,

I need,

You're encroaching on my territory.

The I is what causes you a lot of problems.

No wonder if the,

That similes,

I said it to the monks a lot of times,

The simile of the spikes.

There are some people,

Some people who've got very long spikes coming out of them.

Really sharp but they're invisible.

You can't see them.

But they got such,

They come into a room,

You want to get out as soon as possible because you get scratched.

The people who just not,

Don't come into my space.

Long spiky people.

Other people,

They just got their ordinary amount of spikes,

You know,

Just,

You get close enough,

How are you doing today but don't get too close.

This is my space.

The ordinary people,

There are some people who got very tiny spikes.

You can joke with them,

You can laugh at them,

You can,

You know,

Try and offend them.

They won't be offended.

You know,

You monks,

You know,

You're just baldies,

You know,

Why didn't you get a life out of your own bra,

You could have made something yourself in life and now look at you,

You can't even retire.

I say this to some people,

I can't retire because I won't give me any money,

I've got no credit card,

No bank account,

No superannuation,

No pension.

I know,

Totally,

The immigration department monks can't have pensions because that means you get more monks coming into the country even though they're a bit older than usual simply because we're not going to take a pension,

We're going to look after ourselves.

We're always,

You know,

Reasonably good health,

We look after ourselves.

So that means,

You know,

They relax some of the visa restrictions for people because we don't.

.

.

So I've got no pensions,

I've got no private health cover,

I've got nothing and I just live on the floor,

I don't even have a bed,

Don't have a driving license,

I don't have any assets,

I don't know,

I've just gone,

What asset have I got?

So that's why I can't retire.

But,

Where did I get onto this from?

I don't know.

But anyway,

I feel pretty happy.

So anyway,

The sense of self,

Because you have a sense of I,

You have a sense of ownership.

So I was right,

Don't get too close.

But you know,

But being a monk,

You know,

You try not to have any spikes at all.

You can say all sorts of stuff and just,

You know,

You don't get scratched.

Isn't that nice?

You can actually have this wonderful sense of safety that whatever you say,

Whatever you do,

You'll always be my friend.

I will never sort of reject you.

Isn't that wonderful?

What happiness?

Yeah,

That's why I keep giving it away.

It's my disease,

The disease which I do have,

I told you that,

Didn't I?

My contagious disease.

Did I tell you I've got a contagious disease?

Can't be cured?

Happy Titus B.

Happy Titus.

Anyway,

So anyway,

That is when if you have a sense of self,

You own things.

That's what self does.

Me,

Mine,

My area,

Don't get too close.

So that means that's a lot of times that's when people do encroaching,

That's where you get upset and angry.

And that's when we got all the problems from.

So it's great if we just,

The less sense of self you have,

The less what we take to be evil is,

There's nothing left there.

So I've got such a little sense of self left that if you know the Christian devil,

The worst thing they say,

I've come to take over your mind.

I've come to take your soul Ajahn Brahm.

You know what I'll say,

You can have it,

I've got none.

So it's a no brainer for me,

Whatever you want,

Just take it.

Anyway,

Anyway,

Question number two before I get into trouble again.

From Indonesia,

My husband and I do not talk much due to arguments.

How do I revive our relationship and deal with his bad temper?

Now in a relationship,

Why is it your husband's fault?

In any relationship when people get married,

I always tell them,

When you're married,

You must not think of yourself.

And when you're married,

If you're a wife,

You must never think of your husband after you're married.

If you're a husband,

You must never think of your wife once you're married.

You mustn't think of yourself.

When you're married,

You must only think of us.

You knit together.

So it's a gay marriage,

Lesbian marriage,

Proper marriage.

When you're married,

It's all about us.

It's not about him,

Not about me,

Not about her,

About us.

So if you don't talk much due to arguments,

It's not his fault,

It's not your fault.

It is our fault.

You understand that?

Because your husband will want to talk to you.

You know,

You want to talk to him,

He wants to talk to you.

You want to somehow,

Oh come on,

You know,

We don't want to live like this,

It's obviously a lot of suffering not being able to talk to one another.

I just remember there was this Thai lady married to this Italian guy.

She's not here but I think some of you know them.

So they invited us for,

He owned a café in,

I think,

William Street.

So they had to do a blessing ceremony off for his lunch.

So he would come on off for something and talk to us,

With Ajahn Jharkhar I think,

Or Ajahn Yana Dhamma,

And talk to us and then he'd go and then she'd come and say,

What did you talk,

What did he say to you?

And she'd talk to us and then she'd go and he'd come back,

What did she say to you?

It was crazy stuff.

They hadn't talked to each other about three years and they worked in the same restaurant,

Husband and wife.

Oh,

Crazy stuff,

I don't know how they do that.

But it's good fun.

So but after a while,

To argue with some bad temper,

Do a forgiveness ceremony.

You can get them to come along,

Have a forgiveness ceremony,

Whatever we've done by body,

Speech and mind.

And don't think this is fault or it's my fault.

It's always our fault.

I ask forgiveness.

You know,

You're my partner.

You know,

Probably at this age,

You know,

You haven't got much chance of getting another partner.

Come on,

Be honest.

So you might as well stick with the one you have and just a forgiveness ceremony and just,

Oh,

Come on.

Anyway,

From Thailand,

We all have issues in our childhood.

How do we get over them?

You don't get over them,

You embrace them.

Bring them into your life.

Yeah,

Issues.

Some are very painful issues.

But you know,

You learn from them.

It's just who you are.

A lot of times when we try and reject them,

Push them out,

This is no good.

There's a lot of time when we feel we have to.

.

.

Oh,

What was the story?

I haven't told this story for such a long time.

The two chicken farmers.

Know the two chicken farmers story?

The two chicken farmers.

The first chicken farmer gets up early in the morning and just goes into the chicken shed to collect,

You know,

Something for breakfast.

So gets a basket and fills a basket full of chicken shit,

Chicken poo.

You know,

Little pellets of poo.

And brings the poo back into the house where it stinks the whole house out.

That's a very stupid chicken farmer.

Crazy.

The second chicken farmer,

He goes into.

.

.

What is she?

She goes into the chicken shed early in the morning with a big bucket and collects the eggs,

Puts the eggs in the basket.

She leaves the chicken poo in the shed.

It will rot.

Later on it will become valuable fertilizer.

We don't bring it into the house with you.

You bring the eggs back into the house.

And there,

You know,

She makes a nice omelet for her family and sells the rest of the eggs in the market for cash.

That's a very smart chicken farmer.

What's the meaning of that story?

The meaning of that story is,

When you,

From Thailand,

The person who asked this question,

When you look at your child,

When you go to your past,

What do you put in the basket and bring back home with you?

Do you remember all the bad stories of your childhood?

Are you a shit collector?

Or do you leave it in the past to rot,

Become fertilizer for your wisdom,

Compassion,

Understanding later on?

And bring the eggs back into the present moment.

We can make a nice omelet for your family.

Have a wonderful day.

When you recollect the past,

What do you usually recollect?

What type of collector are you?

An egg collector or a shit collector?

And that was Ajahn Chah's,

Used to tell that story.

Such simple wisdom and also unforgettable.

So anyway,

Any questions or comments from the floor here before we finish off?

Okay,

So sadhu,

Sadhu,

Sadhu,

Not good enough,

Come on.

Let's put some energy into it.

One,

Two,

Three,

Sadhu,

Sadhu,

Sadhu.

There we go.

So now,

Play the festival of Ramasanga and then you can go and do what you usually do on a Saturday,

Friday night.

Oops.

Satsang with Mooji

Reviews

Delightful, funny, and always full of wisdom. Thank you so much