Everybody to the ongoing meditation class.
This is a class for those who have done some meditation before and the introduction to meditation class,
Those who are coming to learn meditation for the first time,
That class is being held in the room to our right over there.
So those people coming for the four lesson class or the introduction to meditation,
This is in the class to my right.
In that class,
You'll just meditate for short periods of time.
In this class,
We usually go for about 45 minutes which is a bit long for some people so please be prepared.
Now every time on this ongoing meditation class we mention a different aspect of meditation and one of the key important parts of meditation in order to keep the mind still so it doesn't go wandering from place to place is to learn how to develop the sense of joy and happiness with the meditation.
This joy in meditation,
If you're having a good time,
If you're enjoying what you're experiencing,
If there's a sense of pleasure and fulfillment,
Doing what you're doing,
You tend not to move.
However,
If you don't like where you are,
Your mind will always wander somewhere else.
So the thing which we call restlessness,
Never being able to keep still flitting from one thought to another,
That's natural for a person who doesn't know how to build up happiness and contentment with what they're doing.
And so part of our meditation is not just to focus on this or focus on that,
It's not just to let things be,
It's also to develop this faculty of seeing happiness in simple things.
I know that in our modern world,
Much of our pleasure is generated through exciting things where we're fed on TV,
On movies,
And maybe in life,
Things which are always stimulating us and finding our pleasure in exciting,
Stimulating things.
In meditation we find our pleasure in very subtle,
Peaceful things.
But the pleasure is there,
It just means to notice it.
What it really means is that when we sit down,
The first thing we do in this meditation is to relax the body so it's in a good position,
It's comfortable,
And as many of you know,
When you are relaxed,
There's a certain amount of pleasure in a relaxed body.
If you've just gone to have a massage,
You've just been swimming,
You've been to a spa or whatever,
And then your body is really,
Really relaxed,
Or maybe when you wake up in the morning after a good night's sleep,
You feel nice and relaxed and cosy,
There's that sort of pleasure of the body,
Of just being totally relaxed,
Free at ease.
And that's an important pleasure to be able to notice and recognise in this meditation.
So when you are sitting down and the body becomes peaceful,
Please recognise it's a very wonderful,
Pleasurable state to be in.
Of course that relaxation is never perfect,
It's never 100%,
But it usually is enough to give you that boost of happiness.
And then later on,
As the meditation progresses,
I ask everyone to start relaxing their mental world,
And part of that mental world is this perception of past,
Future and present,
We ask people to please come into the present moment.
And in that present moment,
The reason why people can stay in that present moment is when the present moment turns into what we call the present moment.
The present and the pleasant moment coming together.
So when those two coalesce,
The present moment is the present,
The present is the present moment,
In other words you see some joy and happiness in this present moment,
Then it's easy to stay there.
And that looking at the pleasure and happiness of just being here now is what keeps you from wandering off into the future or the past.
It simply is very nice just to be here.
I think many of you can recognise that there have been many times in your life you've actually really been here,
You've been just maybe having a walk by the beach,
Just enjoying the sound of the waves coming in and going out,
You may have just been walking in the forest,
Listening to the sound of the birds.
Many times in your life you've really been here and there's a certain degree of pleasure in that.
It's good to recognise the pleasure of just being here,
Not going off into the future,
Not lingering in the past.
When you recognise that pleasure of the present moment,
It stays.
You don't have to keep bringing the mind back,
Controlling the mind.
If you have to keep controlling the mind,
You find the mind gets tired after a while.
So the trick in meditation is learning how to notice the pleasure in say the present moment and just how wonderful that is.
And also as the mind gets more and more still and more and more peaceful,
Usually the next stage in the meditation is the silent mind.
Every time I give the exercise to people of just seeing the space between the words,
The pause between thoughts,
That is incredibly pleasant experience.
It's when all the words stop and there's silence.
There's a certain amount of pleasure in that quiet,
Still,
Thoughtless mind.
It's only when we can recognise that pleasure that we can actually stay in that silence.
It's not the will power that keeps you from breaking the silence,
It's the recognition of the pleasure of that state.
It's such a wonderful place to hang out.
Why do I want to spoil it?
And it's the pleasure in each of these states which keeps you from moving elsewhere,
Which keeps you still,
Which keeps your attention sustained in that place.
And as you meditate more and more,
The pleasure actually gets more subtle and actually more intense.
Later on when we meditate,
These are the early stages of meditation,
We encourage meditators to start being aware of their breath.
By being aware of your breath,
You're giving the mind something to anchor on,
Something it knows where it is,
It knows that it's not in the past or the future because your feeling of breath is what's happening right now in this very moment.
So you know the breath as it goes in,
You know the breath as it goes out,
Not forcing it,
Nice and gentle,
Nice and peaceful.
And again there's a certain amount of contentment and pleasure with watching the breath.
There's many reasons why that is a pleasurable experience just to watch a relaxed breath.
And one of those reasons,
One of many,
Is the fact that you spend many of the most comfortable years of your early life close to your mother's womb,
Either inside or just maybe resting on her tummy while you are breastfeeding.
And that gentle rhythm of breath is something which you can recognize deep down as safe and comfortable.
It gives you that sense of security,
It's pleasant,
Which means that it's very easy to watch once you get into it.
There's a certain amount of pleasure which goes along with just watching a very simple,
Comfortable rhythm of your breath going in and your breath going out.
So to be able to do that means you're developing this happiness,
What I call the delight,
That particular pleasure along with the breath.
And then you find you just can't leave the breath.
It's not that you have to focus the mind or concentrate the mind in meditation.
By learning how to recognize the happiness and delight,
The mind sustains its attention naturally.
You don't actually do anything.
You're sitting there having a good time and it gets more and more delightful.
Now there's another reason why this delight comes up.
It's not just that the breath is a delightful object.
It's not just like silence,
It's just so refreshing.
It's not just that when even the body is relaxed,
It's so pleasurable.
There's something else going on there which I recognize,
I learned from the teachings of early Buddhism.
It's this idea or this way of looking at the human mind having two parts to it,
The active mind and the passive mind and the fact that the active mind gets all the energy,
You spend too much of your power thinking,
Planning,
Moving,
Struggling,
So much so that the other half of the mind,
The passive knowing mind,
What we call mindfulness,
Has very little of the energy.
It just has the scraps after all your activity has taken the lion's share of your mental energy.
But when you do less,
When you relax,
When you are still,
When the activities of the mind get quietened down,
More energy is released into mindfulness,
You know more,
You feel more deeply,
You feel more deeply,
But also with that increased mental energy comes mental happiness and delight.
It's just part of the nature of the mind,
If you are tired,
You are grumpy,
If you are energized,
You are happy.
It's just the energy of the mind.
It's what we recognize as that happiness.
So as you do get stood in meditation,
That delights in something like the breath.
It's not just some recognition from early childhood memories which makes the breath so delightful.
It means that the energy of your mind is now released.
You can see more deeply,
You can see just from the very beginning of an in-breath to the end of an in-breath,
You see all the different aspects of just one in-breath.
You can very clearly see the space between the in-breath and the out-breath,
Or the space between the out-breath and the in-breath.
You can see everything so clearly because your mindfulness is empowered and quite naturally it becomes joyful.
From stillness you get happiness,
A great sense of joy coming up in the mind.
And as that develops more and more,
And it does develop more and more,
Your breath becomes even more and more delightful to the point that the delight takes over.
And in the higher states of meditation,
What you actually watch,
Quite an automatic pilot without making many choices,
Just simply the delight of the mind.
The more still it becomes,
The more delightful and powerful it becomes.
Especially when it goes into the very deep states of meditation which I usually only talk about on retreats,
When we have these beautiful lights appear in the mind,
The breath has disappeared,
The whole body has gone,
These beautiful lights in the mind,
They are very,
Very beautiful.
And they give you huge amounts of bliss and happiness.
That's only the start when it gets into the very deep meditation called the jhanas.
What are those jhanas anyway?
The perceptions of incredible bliss,
Ecstasy states,
The sort of things which you used to read about of these hermits in the jungle,
Splicing out for days on end.
That's actually what happens when you get so still.
The mind's energy gets to enormous peaks of power.
And that's just what happens.
So we start off in our meditation by recognizing just the happiness,
The pleasure in simple things,
Like just a relaxed body,
Instead of an excited body.
We notice the pleasure in just being in this moment,
Being free from the burden of the future and the past,
Just like such a weight has been taken off your mind.
And just the pleasure of just silence,
You don't have to speak,
You don't have to give things a name,
You don't have to write a report on your experiences,
You don't have to figure everything else out.
All that burden of responsibilities and duties are taken away and you are free.
One of the problems when you go on holiday,
When you go on a holiday,
The holiday gets poor because you have a burden of having to be happy.
So it's once when you're on holiday and you're not having a good time,
You feel such a failure,
Even just on holidays,
On vocations,
You have this great pressure on you to have a good time.
You can tell your friends when you get back what great time you had.
When you go on a holiday and you go back to work afterwards,
You tell everybody you spent a few thousand dollars having a miserable time,
You feel such a fool.
So even on a holiday,
There's a pressure on you to be happy.
Here there's no pressure on you at all.
Totally free.
Oh what bliss.
So in other words,
When you are in the present moment,
No pressure on you at all to write a report,
To figure out the meaning of life,
No pressure on you at all.
You can totally put all that aside and just be silent.
Oh what bliss.
And then just when you're watching your breathing,
Just notice the pressure of the breath.
Nothing else to do in the whole world,
Just watching this breath come in.
Nothing to do in the whole world,
Just watching this breath go out.
It's very similar to some experiences,
Similar but much deeper and more profound than going to the ocean and just watching the waves come in and out on a calm sunny afternoon.
It relaxes you,
It brings you to a state of peace.
It brings you to a state of burdenlessness.
You've got nothing to do.
Oh what bliss.
So that's just an aspect of meditation which is really important to notice the pleasure and the happiness of each stage.
And as I lead the meditation today,
I will just be emphasizing this and pointing it out at the first 15 or so minutes.
And afterwards I usually be quiet and I enjoy my meditation as well.
So are there any,
First of all I have to keep on announcing because some people came in late,
That this is the ongoing class of meditation.
Those who have come to the introduction to meditation class,
Actually has the teacher come?
Is there anyone there?
Someone has forgotten it was their turn to teach.
So those of you,
If you are sitting outside and you want to come inside,
That's fine,
You can also meditate.
It's going to be a longish meditation,
So sorry about this.
We are throwing you into the deep end as it were.
Ah,
You know what to do?
Okay,
Well this guy is happy to give you a class.
Okay,
I don't know what he is going to do,
But if it's not good,
He can come in here and complain.
No,
I'm sure he is doing a nice thing.
Okay,
So here we go.
So,
For those of you who are still here,
If you would like to get yourself in a meditation posture,
You can begin.
So you close your eyes.
And even before you start relaxing your body,
Just see if you can appreciate the pleasure of about to spend 45 minutes in doing absolutely nothing.
No boss is going to tell you what to do.
No exam at the end of this,
No judging whether I was good or bad.
See the pleasure of being free from all those demands on you.
Free just to be rather than to live up to some idea or some standard.
So first of all appreciate the pleasure of such freedom.
And then come to your body.
Become aware of this body,
Mindful of its sensations as much as you can be at this early stage.
And if you notice any tight pieces of clothing,
My belt is a bit too tight,
I'm going to loosen it now,
Out of kindness and concern for my body's wellbeing.
Then notice how your legs are,
Making sure that there is no part of the body pressing against another part of the body which is going to cause you pain later on.
Making sure the feet are nicely comfortable and your bottom on the cushion,
On the stool,
On the chair is comfortable so there is no folds of clothing cutting into your flesh.
The back is as comfortable as you can get it.
I know there are always these rules about arching your back,
Keeping it straight or whatever,
I don't believe any of those rules.
I feel what my back needs.
I can feel its optimum position.
Now relax it in that position.
My arms and my hands and my head.
I always like to spend a minute or two on the face to make sure the eyes are closed but not screwed down tight and the mouth is closed but not clenched.
So the whole face is showing visual signs of relaxation,
Comfort and ease.
If there is any tightness or tension inside the body,
Any irritation or pain,
I focus on that.
I imagine it relaxing.
Sometimes it's like the part of my body is being stretched by two monsters inside my body pulling at something.
I imagine those monsters letting go and the string becoming slack.
I imagine the presence of a ball of tightness in the body,
A ball of pain.
I imagine it expanding and expanding.
So instead of getting tight and dense,
It becomes soft and fluffy.
I use this beautiful care and kindness to relax even parts of the body that I cannot touch with my fingers.
Muscles in my leg,
I imagine them relaxing,
Like they are being bathed in warm water.
Parts of my throat,
Like they are being massaged.
Adding kindness,
Compassion to mindfulness.
So I am aware and I am kind to what I am aware of.
When my body starts to relax,
I look for the pleasure of such relaxation.
I recognize how delightful it is for my body to be in a comfortable position with very little pressure on it,
Relaxing,
Energizing.
Without pleasure when I recognize it,
Helps the body to continue to relax even further.
The delight keeps my body still.
Discomfort causes it to move.
I stay with that delight because I deserve it.
I deserve to relax.
Say it to yourself.
And when you are ready,
In your own time,
Let the body go.
Focus on relaxing your mental world.
See if you can abandon all this burden of the past.
Like so many bags you have to carry,
All containing your history.
Now is the time to put those bags on the floor.
So you are not carrying the past during this meditation.
It doesn't matter what terrible bad things have happened to you,
You put them down.
So in this time you can just live in the present.
Whatever awaits you in the future,
You put that down too.
So you are not carrying the anxieties and fears and hopes of the future either.
Between those two,
Between the past and the future,
You find the present moment.
You let go of past,
You let go of future.
What's left is called Now.
And you relax into the Now.
You are kind to it.
And the present moment becomes very delightful.
See if you can notice the joy of being Now.
I've said it for so many burdens.
.
It takes a while to notice the delight of just being in the present moment.
Because without that recognition,
The mind will go off into the future or the past or go into thinking fantasies.
Stay in the present moment,
Hold it there until you can see the beauty of now.
Alive as it happens.
This being not going anywhere,
Not lingering.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
Alive.
It's being now.
Sometimes curiosity is also helpful.
Being curious as to what it's like just to be.
Not going off into the future,
Not planning.
Not keeping looking over the past which is all finished and dead.
Curious what it would be like if you could just be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
Not going to be here for many minutes in the room.
See if you can notice the beautiful silence,
The space between your thoughts,
The gap,
Between the words.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you can recognize the joy of silence,
It will stay.
If you want to watch your breathing,
Know the breath as it goes in.
Know the breath as it goes out.
See if you can be a natural breath,
As if you're not watching.
It's like you're observing the waves on the ocean.
Just because you look,
It doesn't disturb the waves.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
It's a simple pleasure,
A simple pleasure of just watching breath come in and go out.
So it's getting close to the end of the meditation.
How do you feel?
What's it like inside?
Especially how much delight in meditation is there?
To recognize the pleasure of a peaceful mind,
The happiness of a mind which is free from so many burdens or worries.
If you recognize that pleasure,
The mind will go back there again and again and again.
And now we're going to ring the gong three times to end the meditation.
Please listen to every sound from the gong.
When the last of those sounds vanishes,
Take that as a signal to come out of your meditation.
Very good.
So there we go.
A nice delightful meditation today.
I'm not sure if this was broadcast today.
Are there any questions from the internet?
Doesn't look like it.
So this was offline today.
So,
Are there any questions from the floor?
Please if you have questions,
Please ask them now because at 4.
15 we have to rush out of here.
We're going to Melbourne to launch a meditation book tomorrow.
The flight leaves at 5.
30,
So 4.
15 I'm out.
So any questions anybody has?
So you don't actually line up in front.
I noticed that last night one of the people who are sitting here today was asking about to be meditate,
To be mindful,
To relax,
Do you have to be in a safe environment?
Is that one of the most important things?
I was reflecting on that question and noticing that when I meditated as a young monk,
It was far from safe.
You're meditating in the jungles of North East Thailand.
There really were snakes there.
I was told when I first went to Thailand,
There was 100 species of snake.
99 of those species were venomous and the other one strangled you to death.
In other one,
Each one of them was very dangerous.
And not only that,
There were tigers,
There were bears and elephants and those elephants would kill monks.
Not only that,
There's all these diseases.
Some doctors said you're living in a bacterial soup of malaria,
Typhus,
The goodness knows what else was there.
But nevertheless,
I had very wonderful meditations.
And sometimes some of these monks,
They would deliberately send you to scary places.
Many of the Thai monks were terrified of ghosts.
So they sent them to meditate in the charnel grounds next to bodies which were burning in the open.
Places which were really spooky.
And if that didn't work,
There was this one monastery in Laos just before the Vietnam War and the communists took over.
The abbot of that monastery is very,
Very famous.
He would take his disciples on a walk all day through the jungles to tire them out,
Sweaty,
Tired,
Exhausted.
And they would get to a part of the forest in Laos where they had these huge trees,
Hundreds of years old.
And the monks had made little platforms high up on those trees,
Just the size of these cushions which the monks sit on,
With no railings on the outside,
Just a flat piece of board with a bamboo ladder going up.
And the abbot,
The teacher,
Would send the monks climbing up these ladders to these high platforms to meditate.
And he would take the ladder away and set it back in the morning.
So they're exhausted,
Facing a drop which would kill anybody.
The monks had to meditate all night and that was not safe at all.
But many monks said they got into an amazing,
Peaceful,
Wonderful meditations.
At least the ones who survived to tell the tale said that.
We don't know about the monks who fell off.
Sometimes you really wonder,
Do you really need to be safe to have a good meditation?
Because really it's not the safety or the terror,
It's not the safety of the situation.
Again,
It's one's attitude,
Just the way one regards.
Because some people,
They're terrified in the safest of situations.
One of the safest places in the world is Bodhinyana monastery.
Nothing ever happens there.
It's protected,
Storms come and they go round the monastery,
They never come into it.
It's very,
Very protected.
When a fire came through,
Nothing got damaged.
It's very protected.
But still,
Even in safe places,
Some people are afraid.
And even in frightening places,
Some people are very safe.
So sometimes you wonder,
What is this safety,
This fear thing?
And of course it's those people who have lots of attachments,
Sometimes neurological fears,
Maybe the danger in the slightest of things,
They're the ones anywhere who will not be able to meditate.
But sometimes the people can train themselves with this beautiful sense of confidence,
This beautiful sense of letting go.
A tiger eats me,
At least I will escape from the old people's hopes.
If I fall off the tree,
At least that's a very quick death.
I don't have to suffer the months and years of cancer.
Whatever it is,
You find that some people are chronically afraid because of the negative attitude which they have in life.
But sometimes putting yourself in what would be fearful situations forced you to develop a very positive mind state.
Especially in fearful situations,
Not safe situations,
It meant that you could not be lazy.
Because sometimes the problem with safety is people get very lazy.
In dangerous situations,
You have to be alive and alert.
And there's two ways of dealing with those dangers.
One is again,
To always be scanning and be sort of restlessly looking at this and looking at that.
The other thing is to stay in the present moment.
Because sometimes you can escape from all fear and anxiety just by letting go of the past and the future.
That's why it's another way of finding safety.
Because when you think about it,
All the anxiety and fear,
You should be projecting off into the future what might happen.
And fear,
Fear is when we look at the future with a negative mind.
The biopsy,
It's going to be negative,
It's going to be negative.
My cancer is going to be terminal.
I know that this irritation on my throat is the beginning of HIV.
I know this little thing in my nose,
That's the beginning of bubonic plague.
I'm going to die,
It's going to be the end of the world.
Now a lot of times you can see that when we look into the future with a negative mind,
That is called fear.
When you look into the future with a positive mind,
That's called hope.
If you don't look upon the future at all,
That's called meditation.
And there you find the greatest degree of safety,
Right here,
Right now.
So the external situation,
It can help with a lot of people,
But it's not all that necessary.
Sometimes just being in the moment is the safest place you can ever be.
All the fear,
Which is all to do with the future,
Thereby vanishes.
That's why the present moment is a place of safety,
A place of happiness,
A place of freedom.
Any comments?
Chris?
Okay,
Yeah okay.
Yeah,
Yeah,
Taking the monks into place is dangerous.
That's right.
How does it go along with the precept of protecting life and looking after the other creatures,
Not just human beings?
Because to me there is a contradiction.
Oh no,
He's being very kind to all the tigers and other things who would eat the remains of the monks who fell off.
He's being non-discriminative between the animals and the monks.
No,
It is a bit of extreme practice,
I must admit.
And there's another very similar famous story in Thailand.
And the Thai people here meditating know this one.
There was one of the monks who was always falling asleep when meditating.
So they took them to a cliff,
A cliff,
Which was the same thing.
You start nodding,
You fall over and that's death.
And so apparently he had the best meditation of his life on that cliff,
Got into a deep China.
Because of that,
Because that was a story of our tradition,
That some of the monks,
There was no cliff where we lived,
But when they went to do their visas in Bangkok,
They were staying in this monastery,
Which was about three or four stories.
And they get out onto the roof and they sit on the edge of the roof,
Just facing like a four story drop into the courtyard.
And as soon as the abbot saw that,
He locked that door and put it into the monks for doing that.
Because he realised,
Yeah,
Maybe it might work for one monk.
But for most monks,
They'd probably fall off and the monastery would get a bad reputation of killing people.
So it's true,
You have to protect people.
That was an extreme.
But it's interesting that many people actually did.
I've never done that to the monks of Bodhinyana Monastery,
Never put them in fearful situations.
I don't think it really works.
But if you are in a fearful situation,
It's interesting.
That's the way you can deal with it.
I was so skillful that they could cope.
Or was it just the beginners just throw them in the deep end?
I think this was actually.
.
.
They were throwing them in the deep end.
That's right,
Yeah,
I think it was in the deep end.
To separate,
Not from the men,
From the boys,
As they say in Australia,
The monks from the tiger food.
But no,
That's a bit extreme,
I must agree with you.
But practices like this still happen in the criticism?
No,
They don't happen anymore.
The Amnesty International,
The lawyers would sue the hell out of you if you did things like that.
It's just interesting,
It did happen.
And just generally,
Even myself,
I was a Westerner and you were in these jungles which were very,
Very dangerous.
But you had a choice,
You could live with your fear or you could actually just say,
Okay,
I'm not going to be afraid and stay in the present moment.
And sometimes it was actually an advantage there.
You couldn't be lazy.
You know the mind is very lazy sometimes in a safe environment,
Oh,
I can do it tomorrow,
It's really nice and safe so I can actually fall asleep.
But when there's a little bit of an edge there,
Sometimes your mindfulness increases.
Yeah.
I want to tell you,
The monks at the Tiger Temple in Thailand,
When I was there,
This was quite some years ago before it got a bit more commercial but that's exactly how they do.
I've seen a guy take a huge Bengal tiger monk,
Take a huge Bengal tiger for a walk for about 500 metres and I spoke to the monk,
The head monk there who runs the monastery and I said,
You do this by staying in the present moment and radiating love and kindness,
Don't you?
He said,
Yeah,
That's our trick,
That's our trick.
Because if you actually radiate any.
.
.
And this guy actually,
The head monk,
He came along to me and he said,
Sit down here and he brought a Bengal tiger and he just pushed it into my arms and he said,
Just stay in the present moment.
And just,
You know,
It's a pretty weird thing to do but you've got this huge tiger and putting your arms around this huge tiger and you just can't go,
There's no other place to go but the present moment.
Because otherwise you just get totally freaked out and those animals really,
They know fear,
They can pick it up.
So I think what you're saying is correct about staying in the present moment,
There's a refuge place.
Excellent,
Thank you.
Okay,
I'm going to finish off now because my lift has arrived so we can bow three times and then please excuse me,
I'm not going to be able to answer any of your questions after a second,
I'll just go straight into that car.
So if you've got any very deep important questions to ask about the nature of the life,
You can see the monk sitting next to me.
Sorry about that.
