Day 066/365: Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm

This is a guided meditation with Ajahn Brahm. About 15 minutes of Dharma talk/meditation advice and inspiration. About 20 minutes of guided meditation and about 25 minutes of silent meditation practice. These are followed by a Q&A session/closing thoughts after the meditation practice.

Transcript

Good afternoon and welcome to this Saturday afternoon meditation time, Especially important whenever the temperature is high, Because meditation is the best way of chilling out. In other words, Keeping cool inside. I know that many people say that the metabolism of the human body creates so much heat. A lot of time that metabolism is, Goes faster when we think, When we worry, When we are anxious, So we use our meditation just to even lower our metabolism, So even in the hot weather, When you are not in a nice place like this with aircon, You can actually feel much cooler. The power of the mind is great, All these experiments which have been done in psychology, Things like hypnotizing a person and touching them with a little piece of metal, Which hypnotize them to think is red hot, And they touch the skin, Not only do they scream but blisters come up, Which actually, It's only an ordinary room temperature piece of metal, Because you hypnotize them, Because their mind believes it's red hot, Not only does it hurt but actually has a physical effect of blistering, Which actually shows the power of the mind over the body. And there was another case, I was telling some people a few days ago, On a retreat I gave in North Perth several years ago, This poor guy came to the retreat in a rubber face mask, Like some weirdo. The retreat centre was the Redemptorist monastery in Vincent Street, So I thought it was one of these kinky guys coming up from Northbridge, But apparently it wasn't anything to do with that. All it was, Was he had this extreme case of eczema, So he had a rash all over his body, Literally from the top of his head to his feet. And he showed me it before he came in to the retreat, He had the face mask on to stop him scratching the skin off his face. And he opened up his shirt, Lifted up his trousers and legs to show him the extent, And he said, I'm wearing this face mask to stop me from scratching, But also I don't know if I can last an hour of your retreat, Because it's just so, So irritating. He'd been to the, Obviously the doctor, He referred him to a psychiatrist and goodness knows what other specialists, Nothing had been working and eventually he decided to try some meditation. And just to show the power of the mind over the body, He lasted the whole nine days. And at the end of the ninth day, He came to see me before we left, And he opened up his shirt, He had no face mask on, His face was clear, He opened up his shirt, Said it's all gone, He lifted up his trousers, It had all gone except a narrow band around each ankle, About an inch wide. This would really upset most people, But for me this is nothing, Nothing at all. Thank you so much. His meditation had got rid of this extreme form of eczema. This was not just somebody's belief, You know, I feel better now. You can actually see it on his body, His skin was clear again. That actually shows something of the power of this mind over the human body. So you may not have eczema, You may not have some of these other terrible illnesses, But we're in a heat wave now and it's coming on to summer, You have to go out to work, You have to go shopping, Whatever else you have to do, Stop complaining. Because when you think hot, It gets hotter. So you even think cool. With meditation we've done this, The opposite of the heat is to control the bodily temperature to actually make it get hotter. Sometimes there's other experiments, I'm always interested in this, Even just looking in your hand and learning how to just make your fingers hot just by just thinking that they're hot, Just keep on focusing on those fingers, Focusing on them until they actually get warmer. Can you feel your fingers getting warmer now? After a little while you can get your fingers really hot. The power of the mind is like that. So you also have the power of the mind just to cool yourself down, Just by thinking ice or thinking snow or thinking aircon, Whatever it is, Because that starts to think coolness and the body temperature just regulates itself, It can go down. And you feel very cool. The power of the mind is amazing in these areas, Just how if you have fear, Anxiety and worry, That increases the metabolism, It just makes you hotter, You got more heat in your body, Which means you do feel far, Far hotter. So there's all sorts of stuff we can do and you'll be experiencing this sometimes when you meditate. If you sit down, I remember many times being born in London, Sitting in some really, Really cold places and sitting down and just watching my breathing, Going in and going out, Not really worrying about the body. And after a while my body was okay. My body, You couldn't feel it anymore. It was frozen. That's not what I really mean. What I mean is you just forgot about it. When you forgot about it, It tended to regulate itself and was fine. When I came out, I could feel the cold, It wasn't getting inside of you like it would otherwise. It just had the power of a very peaceful mind. Now you can understand why sometimes people can just go into very, Very cold places and meditate and they're absolutely fine and healthy, Even though some people say, No, You must have a chill factor. Or you can go into hot places and sometimes be okay, Just because you've got a very cool mind. And it is the case. The mind is so important and so powerful, You can cool your mind down that way. So actually how do you do that? It needs a bit of, Not so much control, But understanding of the nature of the way we use our mind, Especially with thinking. Now our thinking is absolutely crazy. We think we don't need to, We think of things which are totally useless. If you could only record your thoughts, If you could have some iPod which you can plug into your brain and record your thoughts and play them back to yourself at the end of the day, You'd be amazed at what a waste of time all those thoughts were. If you could sometimes note down your plans, All the things you're worried about and planned for and just at the end of the week, Just check out how many of those plans were really necessary and how many actually were really useful for you, Not alone necessary, You found most of them aren't. Total waste of time. Now we can't have a machine to do that. We have something else called mindfulness, Recollection. We can listen to our thoughts, We can be aware of them. And when we're aware of them, If we can sometimes separate from them, In other words, Objectify from them, When they're right in front of us, We can't see very much. When we objectify them, We can get a much better picture of them. The simile which I have been giving for years, Somebody who's been coming here for years, You know that I've often told the simile of the hand, How big is my hand? My hand is now so big I can't see anybody. All I can see is my hand. That's the only thing I can see in this whole world. Now when I put my hand where it belongs at the end of my arm, The hand hasn't changed its size, It hasn't diminished or disappeared. It's exactly the same size. Now I've got perspective, It's out here instead of too close to me. I can see my hand, I can see each one of you as well. I now have perspective. I've been teaching that for years. And now there's this guy who's making a name for himself in Sydney, A psychologist. This is his method. He does actually change it a little bit to avoid being sued by the Buddhist Society of Western Australia. He said two hands. This is your thoughts, Two hands. If they're out here, You've got perspective, You've got objectivity, They're not much of a problem. But he said you put them up here and you can't see anything except your hands. I saw a video of him doing that, Exactly my technique. But anyway, Who cares, As long as it's being used and used wisely. But this is the same with your thoughts. When they're right up here, When they are my thoughts, My worries, My concerns, We don't have any objectivity, Of course you get obsessed with them. So in meditation, In order to be wise to your thoughts, Put them out here somewhere. Their thoughts, There's a big space between the observer, Which is you, And those thoughts. When you could put a space between it, You know they're easy to stop. You can say no to them. When they're right up here, They're so close, That's all you can see, You're just under their control. Put some space between them and you're in control. The simile for that is a simile of watching your TV. Or like when I was a young man going to the movies. And we used to have great fun as students going to the movies because we would never take them seriously. I remember one movie I went to with my friends called Tarantula. And this was a movie where there was some spider that wandered into some nuclear plant. You know the story. Because they got radiated, They become mutant and they've been expanded to some incredibly big size, Like half the size of this hall. And this was a monster which was, And it's amazing, I always notice, I'm not sure if it's the same these days, But in those days, All the movies, The monsters, Especially things like Tarantulas, They'd only go after the young and beautiful girls. If a woman was fat and ugly, She was safe. Is it the same these days, Movies? I don't know why monsters are always after the pretty girls. But anyway, So there's always going after these monsters. And people in the audience, They'd always shout out, Hey look behind you, The Tarantula is coming. They do that because it's absolutely stupid, That's a movie. The Tarantula can't hear you. It's been shot a long time ago. They may think that's stupid. How many people watch the cricket, Apparently there's cricket going on now. And they say, Hit the ball, Even when they're in your sitting room, On the sofa, Watching the TV. Catch it, Catch it, They can't hear you, It's a recording. Or if it is a live, It's live to air TV, They're over in some cricket ground on the other side of the world. And you still say catch it, Catch it, Why do you do that? It is because by that time you're right inside the TV. You're there. It's like you're on the pitch. It's like you're in the movie, You're in the scene. So you really think, If you say, Tarantula behind you, You really think they can hear you. And that's how we get obsessed with our thoughts. We're right in there, They're important for us. Instead, Imagine your thoughts like on a movie. Just thoughts. The scenery is going past, The actors are doing their things, But it's only a movie. It's not important. And you're just sitting on your sofa and the TV is over there somewhere. There is a space between you. Next time you watch the TV, See if you can imagine that. The TV is right here now, You're right inside it, That's where you get involved in it. You put the TV out there, You remember there's a space between me and the TV, You can let go very easily. There's the same with your thoughts. Thoughts are out there somewhere. They're not my thoughts. Just a movie. Usually the thoughts are not real. An approximation of reality is how we interpret things. It's not the things themselves. It's a description and it's very bent. It's like a politician's spin, Our thoughts. You cannot trust politicians and even your thinking is even worse. So don't believe it. Put it out there and then you'll find it's easy to let go. You'll find the thought, It's hot, It's hot, It's hot, It's cold, It's cold, It's cold, I'm tired, Put it out there, Don't identify with it. And you'll find you have this great sense of freedom and also you can let go of thoughts you don't really want to be bothered with. You have far more chance of being peaceful. Even if you've got an ache or a pain. I'm hurting, I've got a gut ache, I've got a back ache. Sometimes that is really close to you. It's hard to put it out here but if you can, You know, If the body is out here and I'm just in my sofa, Just listening to this body, Looking at it, I can't get rid of it, It's still my hand, But I can put it out here and then it's not such a big thing anymore. Yeah, It's hot, But it's not such a big thing anymore. Yeah, It's chilly, But it's not the big thing. There's so much else and I don't need to obsess. I don't ever need to interrupt by saying, There's a monster behind you, Look out, Catch the ball, Kick it, Tackle him. You don't need to do that anymore because you've got space, Perspective. And if you do that in your meditation, Meditation becomes very easy. You become this, What they call the silent observer, Detached a little bit, You can even imagine yourself as this monk on the top of a mountain or a nun on the top of the mountain, This hermit sitting on top of the mountain watching all the world go by. And that is your world as well, All your thoughts and emotions come and go, Come and go. In Bodhinyana monastery where I live, For a couple of years I was staying in this hut which had this great view over the south west highway. And I remember just on a Friday evening, I watched all the lights of the cars all go south for the weekend. And on a Sunday evening, I watched the same lights all go north as all the holiday makers that went back to Perth. And that was just like my thoughts going this way and that way. But I was up in the mountain, Just totally unaffected. I wasn't going south, I wasn't going north, I was just being still. Your thoughts can go south, Your thoughts can go north. You're standing like a monk or a nun, Like a hermit, Like this holy person on the mountain of your heart, Just watching all these thoughts come and go and not being moved by anyone because you've got the space, The separation. So, See if you can try that for this meditation. The separation, Then it's much easier to meditate. You're not hot, You're not cold, That's out there somewhere. Inside I'm always the same temperature, Just cool and nice. Easy. Okay, There we go. Now let's give it a try. Now I have been in the habit of being absolutely kind to you and also kind to my own body. Some of you have been here for 15 minutes or half an hour, So let's get up and stretch. When you do stretch, Please be aware of the person next to you or behind you. Please do not hit them, We're non-violent. And when you're ready, Please sit down. And close your eyes. It is much better to close your eyes and then make yourself comfortable. Cos with your eyes closed, You're a bit, What's the word, Just not really paying 100% attention, You're distracted. With your eyes closed, You can put all the power of your brain to being aware of your body without distractions of sight. And you can see what you need to do to make your body more comfortable. So don't just accept this as your final position. What can I do to make it better? It must be some adjustment of your legs, Fidgeting of your bottom, Just moving the shoulders, Even just being aware of how your hands and fingers are positioned. The thing which fidget the most are your fingers on your hand. Why? It's because you never really put them in a comfortable position to begin with. So get the most comfortable position for your own fingers and the rest of the body as well. Don't rush this part of meditation. Spend these 2 or 3 minutes with your body. This is not just for comfort, It is also an exercise in itself for sustaining your mindfulness, Not letting it rush off on to some other object, But keeping on your body. Sustaining your mindfulness on your body, Even though you might want to go somewhere else. And it also encourages kindness. You are actually caring for your body, You want it to be free of aches and pains as much as possible. You are caring for it. That's just an important part of all the meditation. Just to have this mind of kindness. Feel the body relax. Can you notice that particular feeling in your body of relaxation? You may not be totally relaxed, You may only be a little bit relaxed, But at least you know what relaxation feels like. You can focus on that experience of relaxation, It will get deeper. The body relaxes more and more. You cannot relax your body anymore by moving it or scratching it. And just see if you can relax it just through the power of your mind. Be aware of the most prominent sensation in your body, The one which stands out above all others, Which is usually an irritation, An ache or a pain. Focus on that, See if you can relax it. If it's a compressing pain, Expand it. If it's the sort of pain where things are being pulled and there's tension there, Imagine the two ends being released, Like a rubber band which has been stretched and now let loose. Just imagine that ache or pain getting less. Your awareness, One of its purposes is to give you feedback. It's not just knowing what's happening, It's knowing how these things are changing. And if you notice the ache, The pain, The irritation is changing to get less painful or irritating, You are in the right direction. Continue. If you notice the irritation, Ache or pain getting worse, Stop, Let go, Do something else. This is where you learn. You learn from trial and error and the feedback given by awareness, To be able to relax your own body deeply. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. Sometimes you may notice it's fear which creates the pain, Which squashes things and stretches things. Only let go of that fear, Then the body will relax, Become open and loose. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. You're letting go, Not holding any part of the body tightly. When the body is relaxed, You can possibly make it. Let it go and now put your attention on relaxing your mental world. You probably have some thoughts going on in your mind. They're mostly about the past or the future. Sometimes they can be about fantasies. Whatever they are, See if you can take them from in front of your awareness, Put them out at the end of your hand as it were, To separate the observer from all those thoughts, From the past and the future. Imagine all those past thoughts, Just like old reruns, With movies which you've seen so many times. You're interested in that now. Know that future, All that future is the prequels, The trailers of things which are coming on your set next week. Not interested in those either. Be interested in what's happening right now. By putting space between you and the thoughts, You finally can let them go. Attain this beautiful state of silence, Silence in this present moment. You are actually silent. You involve yourself in the thoughts which don't belong to you. You get sucked in, Like you get sucked into the TV set. Keep the distance, The observer and the observed with the space in between. You notice the observer is silent and peaceful when it separates. You can hear sound of whatever machine that man is using. Imagine that sound is a long distance from you, The space between you and that sound. Make that distance as far as you possibly can. The thing which is observing is peaceful. Don't get sucked in. Like you're living in a bubble. Between your bubble of the present moment and silence, Everything is nice and peaceful. The noise is outside. The aches, The pains, The thoughts are outside. In the bubble of just the observer, You are peaceful. I promise you will never URLs I promise you will never 51. . . . . . Let the breath carry peace into the observer. Breathing out, Let go. Taking any tightness or tension or sickness or pain out of your body, Out of your mind. Breathing in peace. Breathing out, Let go. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Just being with your breath like a hermit on top of a mountain. No past, No future. Just now with this breath happening. Breathing in peace. Breathing out, Let go. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Breathing in peace. Getting close to the end of the meditation now. How do you feel? What's this meditation done for you today? How much peace can you experience? How relaxed is your body and mind? Linger for a few moments just on the feeling of peace inside. We'll now ring the gong three times. Please listen to every sound of the gong. When the last ringing vanishes, That is the signal to come out from your meditation. And the third ringing vanishes. There we go. Now we have time for some questions. Some of those come from overseas. Any questions about the meditation or things pertaining to meditation here? While you're getting going, See what's from overseas. One from Italy and one from Romania. From Italy, In Mindfulness Bliss and Beyond, Which I wrote, You wrote that from the first jhana onwards, The sense of time disappears because these states are unchanging. Later when describing the second and third immaterial time, You say each that they persist for yet longer periods of time. But how can their relative duration be compared if all possible emerging time has disappeared? So this is a technical question, It's a very deep state of meditation. While you're in that state, Within that state, You have no perception of the passing of time. So while you're actually immersed in those states, It's like a timeless, You're there for long periods of time, You don't realize how long. But when you come out of that meditation, Then you can see the clock. So while you're inside, There's no perception of time. That's why I said the sense of time disappears within those states. But when you come out afterwards, Then you notice from the clocks which are all around you, The many hours have passed. Especially the deeper the meditation, The deeper or the longer the time. And from Romania, How can we cool down the fire in the mind, The version for people who are mean, Who've done bad deeds to you? Ok, And I'm sure you've all got some people who are mean and do bad deeds to you. But they are not totally mean. They don't always do bad deeds to you. So how you stop those fires in the mind, You get out the piece of paper and on the left hand side, Well, On the top of the paper, You write down the name of that person. Draw a line down the middle, On the left hand side, You write down all the mean things they have done to you and all the bad things they have also done. Write them down. That's fun to do. But once you've filled in the left hand side of the piece of paper, On the right hand side, Write down all the wonderful kind things they have done. That is hard to do, Which is why it's worth doing. It's hard to do, Find out all the wonderful qualities, The great qualities, Like if you say, Have Adolf Hitler. He was a vegetarian and he loved his mother. So you can write that down in the right hand column of someone like even Adolf Hitler. Whatever you have, Any human being, You can always find some beautiful qualities in them. And then you have on the left hand column, You have all the bad mean things they have done to you, On the other column you have all the kind things they have done to you. Now you cut that piece of paper in half, On the left hand side you throw away, You keep the right hand side. And every time you get aversion towards them, Take out that piece of paper where you've recognised all the wonderful kind things that that person has been mean to you, Has actually done. Because the Buddha called this, He called it, It's a term for it, He called it, The Bipalasas. It is the perversions of perception, Where because we have a bad mood, We only perceive in the person what we want to see. If we're upset at them, We can only see all the terrible things they have done to us. If we're in love with them, We can't see. We just can't understand just the nice, The terrible things they do, We can only see the beautiful part of them. So that's what happens, We bend our perceptions. And anger is just a bent perception at all. So you get upset at people because they've done bad things. But probably you've done as bad as they've done. Maybe not maybe as bad as you think, But you've done some bad things as well. What do you do with your own bad actions? All the time you've let other people down, You've been mean to people, You have to forgive them. Let them go, Learn from them and move on. Call forgiveness. The same if someone else has been mean to you and done the wrong thing to you, Then please learn from it and let it go. Move on from it. Otherwise you're this person who allows these people who have hurt you before to hurt you again and again and again. Every time you remember the time they cheated you, They are cheating you out of your happiness again. They cheated you many years ago. Now they are cheating you out of your freedom and happiness. So a lot of times, When you look at these ways we use our mind, It's quite obvious but the problem is, As I said with the simile of the hand, When you really get into this, When the perception is perverted, You can only see the terrible things which they've done to you, The times they've let you down, The times they've really acted like really cruel, Nasty people. That's all you can see. You need to put it out here. You do see still the nasty things they've done to you, You can also see much more. Put a space between you and that so-called fire in the mind. The fire out there, And you're the observer, You can see more than the fire. You can see the fire, The things are done wrong, You can see all the other things, You'll be surprised. There's no human being in this world who hasn't done a bad thing. There's no human being in this world who's done many good things. I use that perception, As many of you know, When I used to go and visit prisons, And these weren't ordinary bad people, These were people who've done such bad things, They've been put in jail, They've done some terrible crimes to people. But you can see their crime, You can see other things they've done as well. And the simile which really works, And this is for the person in Romania, Is a simile of the two children in the supermarket with their mothers at parallel checkouts. And one child drops a carton of milk and he goes splash all over the supermarket floor. Almost simultaneously, The child in the parallel aisle drops a bottle of honey and that smashes on the floor too, And all the honey goes over the floor. And the mother of the child who dropped the milk, Say you stupid boy, And the mother of the child who dropped the honey said that was the stupid thing you did. And you should know there is a world of difference there. One is saying the whole child is stupid, Which is not accurate, It's not fair. The other one is saying that was the stupid thing you did, Which is fair. The first child goes away thinking he's stupid, Hopeless, Not worth trying. The other person realised, Oh they've done a bad thing, They can stop that and make themselves better. There's growth there. So if you think, People who are mean, Who've done bad deeds to you, They are not a mean person. There's a person who's done mean things. They've also done other things as well. They are not a bad person. The person has done bad things. I've never yet met a criminal when I've gone to jail. I've only met people who've done criminal things. It's a huge difference there. Please always remember that. And that's also really true whenever you have people with mental illnesses. There's no such thing as a schizophrenic. There's a person who has episodes of schizophrenia. There's no person in this world who's ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder. There's people who have episodes of ADD. You call them, You are ADD, You are schizophrenic, You're a criminal. It's amazing if you call them that, That's what they become. If you look at a person as being mean and nasty, They're a mean and nasty person. By surprise, That's what they become. If you look at a person and say you've done a mean thing, That's a nasty thing you've done, You're not a nasty person, The difference is huge. It's amazing that sometimes they change. Just like you have changed. So there's no such thing as a mean person. No such thing as a nasty person. People who do mean and nasty things. Can also do kind things as well. You open that possibility. I think you all know the ending of that story which is really powerful. That's why I keep repeating it. When I told this type of story at the Institute of Mental Health in Singapore when I gave a keynote address at a conference some years ago, The professor of schizophrenia, The head of the unit in the whole of Singapore, Congratulated me on my talk. I asked him, What are you doing in this Institute of Mental Health? I'm the professor of schizophrenia. I run this unit in the Institute of Mental Health for every person who gets that disease in Singapore and overseas as well. And of course I asked, How do you treat schizophrenia? And he smiled and said, I do not treat schizophrenia in the schizophrenia unit of the Institute of Mental Health in Singapore. Just like you said Ajahn Brahm, I treat the other part of the patient, The part which is not schizophrenic. What are your results? Way better than conventional treatments. And I think you can understand why it works. So from Romania, Do not treat the meanness in that person, Do not treat the badness in that person, Treat the other part of them. Look for the other part of them. You will find it, You will help them and help yourself and the fires in the mind will cool off and disappear. It was a classic story in the time of the Buddha, Where the Buddha met a serial killer. He was about to kill the Buddha. Obviously never could kill the Buddha because the Buddha is like a superhero in the movies. You can't kill superheroes. You can almost kill the superhero but in the end they wake up, They're alive, Even though they kill anybody. Bombs and explosions. I still remember seeing this movie Armageddon. I didn't have the headphones, I was on the plane being bored and I saw, The thing came down. And having this, You can work out what the story is. Finally there was a meteor about to hit the earth and blow it all up. And the heroes, We have to be Americans, I don't know why we always have to be Americans. Why can't you have a few, Even like Italians or Romanians saving the world these days? We always have to be Americans. What would we do without America? That's cynical, Okay. And they go up and one of them, Something goes wrong with their spacecraft and they hit this big meteor and it goes smashing into the mountain and explosions and sparks come and then they go rolling down, Another explosion and sparks and it was a huge crashing going a thousand miles an hour into another ravine, Crashing and rolling and sparks and explosions about three or four minutes. And then it stops. Any person who wasn't an American, Who wasn't a superhero, Would actually get incinerated straight away. And then a little hand came, You can just see it on the screen, A little hand came out and the heroes, Brad Pitt or something, Pulled his head up. He didn't have a scratch on him. His hairstyle was still perfect. So I burst out laughing in the aircraft. I thought it was the funniest thing I've ever seen. If you do watch a movie, Take the headphones off, It's much more interesting and fascinating. It's just totally ridiculous. But that's what happens in the perceptions of things like these people do not get killed. How did I get on to that anyway? Forget now, Anybody? Sorry? Angkor Imma, That's right, The serial killer. And this serial killer, The Buddha didn't see his serial killing. He saw the other part of the person, Focused on that. He became this enlightened monk. It's amazing what you can do. You don't see the bad in somebody. You see the good in them. You don't see your sickness, You see the health in you. You don't see the stupidity. You see your wisdom. That's how the fires in the mind can actually be cooled down. There we go. It works for schizophrenia. How much more would it work for the fires in the mind where you get angry? Look at the part of the mind which isn't angry. Look at the part of the other person which is not mean and cruel. If you look, You'll find it. Any comments or questions about that? Yes, We have one from you. Thank you so much. Yes? Yes? So there we are. Very good, There we are. All the people here. Nobody heard about that. What they actually say, Get some people in put in jail for a long time. And they're about to be released from parole and they don't get the parole because they believe, They just look back on what they did 20 years ago and they don't even look at all about what else they've done in the 20 years since all the other things they did in their life before then. So it's a judgement which is very unfair and unbalanced and uneven. The reason is because we still live in a society which seeks revenge. You did something terrible, Therefore we'll have to hurt you and hurt you and hurt you and hurt you and hurt you and hurt you. Forever. That's a revenge society. Someone has hurt you. They've been really mean to you, Maybe a partner who sort of deceived you or sort of slept with your best friend or whatever it was. And you think they don't deserve to be forgiven. They're bad, They've hurt me so much. Revenge, Revenge, Revenge, Revenge. It doesn't take an Einstein to know that revenge hurts you. Probably more than the person you direct your revenge to. It hurts society when we don't forgive. We cannot forgive people 20 years on. And how can we forgive all those terrible things which people have done to you? You'll live with anger. You'll live with revenge. You'll never be able to let go of the past. And don't think that we have to make examples of people. I remember reading in a sociology book that, I think this was over 100 years ago, A psychologist interviewed, Or did a little bit of research, I think in some of the prisons in UK when they still had death sentences, They interviewed all the people who were on death row about to be hung. There was no appeals in those days. If you were on death row about to be hung, You were hung. They asked all those people, How many of you have actually seen a public hanging before? Over 90% of them had actually witnessed a public hanging. So much for the power of deterrence. They'd actually seen themselves, People be hung in the public hangings which were there 120 years ago. Was it a deterrent? No. I go a lot to Malaysia and Singapore, If you get caught with drugs, You're flogged or you're hung. Does that deter people? There's plenty of drugs in Singapore and Malaysia. Does it deter people? Not at all. Punishment does not deter. And of course you all know that prisons get bigger and bigger and bigger when you guys have to pay for them all. Isn't there another way? Some of you have to visit all those places and try and get more volunteers. He was asking the other day if anybody wants to help out the Buddhist Society and volunteer, Go to visit some of the people in jail, Please speak to Hugh. There's usually 6 people who are on roster and we've only got 4 now, So we need some more volunteers. It's actually really rewarding when going into jails. And you can always, Whatever hours you spend in jail, Helping out, Just talking to people, You can always use those as credit. If ever you get sentenced, You can tell the judge, I did 50 hours community service inside jail, So that will be taken off your sentence. Maybe. Okay. So I think that, Thank you for that anyway. And hopefully from Italy it was a very easy answer, The one from Romania, Much more deep answer, But please let it all go. You're only burning yourself when you have a version for others. Very good. So hopefully you enjoyed that today. We can now pay respects to Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, We have a cup of tea, Or do whatever you want. You can go out into the fire outside, Inside is cool.

Reviews

Wonderful talks and wonderful meditations especially with all the quiet time to practice. Many thanks once again ☮️💖🙏🕉️

Thank you for sharing this with us!