Opening Up To Kindfulness 19 July 2021
Opening Up To Kindfulness 19 July 2021
opening up to
kindfulness
Ajahn Brahm
Copyright © Ajahn Brahmavamso 2021
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Contents
Foreword iv
Introduction vi
1 Kindfulness 1
6 Anicca—Nothing Lasts 70
7 Dukkha—Suffering 84
8 Anatta—Nobody There 97
And it turned out that he was one of the 10% whose hearing
was restored. What a wonderful thing that was, wasn’t it? No.
Because the kid really complained. He said: ‘You never asked me.
I don’t want to hear. All I’ve got now is this terrible noise. I’d
rather have an extra hand.” He said he learned the world through
feeling; he was so sensitive to touch. He added, “You made this
assumption that everybody wants to hear, and you never asked
me.”
I put this story in the book because it was an example of how
often it is we assume we know what a person needs, and out of
compassion we go and help them.
Many of you know that I like to cultivate a positive mind.
When I go overseas to different countries, I like to learn at least
one word in their language and the word I always try and re-
member is ‘very good’.
You can understand the power of a nice word like that. How
often in your life do you get criticised and put down? “This is
wrong. You should do it another way.” “You’ve been misbehaving.”
Because of the nature of this harsh speech, it is so hard to get any
respect. There are a lot of times we always feel we’re diminished,
we’re not good enough, whatever it is we do is never good enough.
Isn’t it nice when you come up to me and tell me what you’re
doing, and I say: ‘very good’? That is Kindfulness. That is an in-
gredient people probably need more than anything else. I’m just
affirming that there’s nothing terribly wrong with you. Just this
amount of kindness and respect could give you confidence and
energy to let go of the past, when you may have done something
unskilful.
4 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
Sometimes you’re not quite sure what it was you did, but it
must be something not so good because you’re suffering right
now. As a result, you’re feeling a lack of self-worth. Lack of self-
worth means that we can’t love ourselves. And when we can’t love
ourselves, we can’t love others, nor can we have a beautiful life.
Lack of self-worth is
a great problem in our modern world.
Do you know the word in Cantonese for very good? It’s ‘Ho ho
ho’. 😄 Now I understand that Santa Claus is Chinese; he doesn’t
come from the North Pole but from the Far East! 😁 ‘Ho ho ho’ is
an example of Kindfulness: being aware and giving kindness.
When I was in Hong Kong, I went to a very nice monastery
where many monks from China came to visit. I had a conversa-
tion with the monks there about how to have discipline. If you’re
going to go to university, you need to discipline yourself. If you’re
working, you need to have some sort of restraint to be able to do
things which are difficult to do. Everyone has to have some form
of discipline but how do you get that discipline?
With Kindfulness,
it’s so easy to have discipline.
Kindfulness is
mindfulness and kindness coming together.
Yeah, you’ve done some terrible stupid things in life. But we’re
all human. You are just another little crooked tree in the beautiful
forest. You’re welcome here. There’s no punishment here. There’s
no fear of being criticised or expelled. Isn’t it wonderful? You can
allow the truth to come up, and once it comes up, you’re kind to
it. Then, you realise that you’re just another crooked tree in this
beautiful forest.
So with Kindfulness, you’re aware and kind, and when the
awareness and kindness come into this moment, you are free.
You don’t need to run away and hide anymore.
If you try to hide things or get rid of things, that’s not kind-
ness. It means you’ll be racing away to somewhere else rather
than staying where the action is.
What will happen if you are not kind to the present moment?
Imagine if someone comes into your house and they’re really
angry or in a bad mood, what does that do to you? That causes
physical and emotional stress though they haven’t done anything,
but just by being angry.
I remember one of the monks in Malaysia once told me that
he was in a house doing a ceremony when a man came into the
room, and he suddenly felt so tense. He was puzzled as he didn’t
know who this guy was, so why was he feeling so tense and almost
afraid? Later he learnt that that man was a public executioner.
The negativity surrounding that public executioner made him
feel tense. On the contrary, if the kindest, most compassionate
person comes into the room, straight away you’ll relax.
One of the great monks I used to know was a Thai monk
called Ajahn Tate. I went to see him in order to ask some deep
questions about meditation. But when I went into the room, I
felt he was one of the kindest monks I’d ever met! I sat down in
front of him and told myself I was going to stay there forever! I
felt so safe. I knew he wasn’t going to harm me or criticise me or
kindfulness 🙔 9
❦
2 Metta to the Past
come home from college, from work or even just from shopping,
we can’t just say, “Oh, I had a wonderful time today.”
The point is: as human beings, we have been taught to have
a fault-finding mind. So whenever we look at the past, we al-
ways remember what went wrong. We collect the dung. We don’t
collect the eggs.
Sometimes people say: “Oh, but Ajahn Brahm, if you don’t re-
member the bad stuff, you’ll probably repeat the mistakes of the
past. You can learn from your mistakes.” Any psychologist would
know something which the Buddha taught thousands of years
ago: you learn much more from your successes than you learn
from mistakes. So if we can remember all the wonderful things
which happened in the past, all the great achievements and suc-
cesses which we’ve been part of, not only does that encourage us
and lift up our happiness and energy, but it also makes us want
to repeat those successes.
When I was young, I was told: “If you just recall all the good
things you’ve done, you’ll get a big head.” “Don’t praise yourself,
don’t remember the good things from the past, just remember
your faults. Work on those and become a better person.” BUT
you become a better person not by looking at your faults but by
remembering all the good things which happened. Also, you don’t
14 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
get a big head—you get a big heart. This is what we’re supposed
to be doing in life: to get big hearts.
In our academic institutions, we’re always taught to educate
our brains, to stuff so much information in there, but here in a
temple such as this, we’re educating our heart, getting a bigger
and bigger heart, so big that everybody is allowed in and that
every part of your past is embraced and nothing is kept out.
market ever again. I don’t want to go. People are just so horrible
in that marketplace!”
Now the wife—wives know how to soothe their husbands
😄—soothed him down until he calmed down enough to come
to his senses.
He then told her what happened. “I don’t even know the fel-
low. Why did he carry on like that? I am so humiliated!”
The wife said, “What did he look like?”
When the man described his appearance, straightaway she
recognised him, “Oh, it’s him. The poor man had an accident
when he was young. He hit his head and suffered permanent
brain damage. The poor boy never went to school or had a job. Nor
will he ever find a wife to share his evenings with. We know he is
mentally deranged and brain damaged. When he gets into the
market, sometimes he curses me, sometimes he abuses someone
else. He’s just crazy.”
As soon as the husband understood the reason why the abuse
came—it was only from a crazy man—all his anger disappeared.
When the wife saw that, she took the opportunity and said, “I
still need those eggs, darling. Don’t mind that guy; he’s crazy.”
“Okay, I’ll go and get them.” He went back into the market
with the basket, and again the crazy guy came up to him.
“Hey, hold your noses, everybody. Here comes dog poo. Close
your eyes. Camel face is here.”
The husband went to the store and bought the eggs, while
being abused all the way. But it didn’t matter anymore. He knew
the young guy was crazy.
metta to the past 🙔 19
The moral of that story is this: if you come home and your
wife scolds you, don’t get upset. She’s probably hit her head that
day. 😁
All anger, according to the Buddha, is temporary insanity. So
when we understand the reason why people say or do things that
may harm us physically or verbally, it’s easy to forgive.
Metta is embracing
the diversity of human beings in this world.
Only when you embrace the past does the process of healing be-
gin. Only when you are truthful rather than hiding things away,
can there be a sense of integration, growth and then freedom.
Metta does lead to freedom. It doesn’t obliterate the past or ne-
glect it; it makes use of it to grow, and in that growth arises this
freedom and compassion.
There is a wonderful story from the reconciliation in South
Africa. At the African National Congress, a South African secu-
rity man who had tortured to death an African activist told the
congress, in front of the activist’s widow, about what had hap-
pened. The widow got up and approached the torturer and killer
of her husband and said, “I forgive you.”
It was one of the most moving times of that series of recon-
ciliation counsels—the woman whose own husband had been
unlawfully killed could forgive the torturer and killer. Both peo-
ple cried and sobbed. Only then was there healing, was there
growth. That’s what metta is. Metta can move to such incredible
depth and power.
Beyond reason,
metta comes from the heart.
And it heals.
If you could do that to the past and to the enemies who have
hurt you, why can’t you do that to yourself ?
In our modern world, people are just consumed by guilt; they
just cannot let go the mistakes of their past. The issue is not
that mistakes should just be obliterated and not be dealt with,
metta to the past 🙔 23
but that mistakes are dealt with in the wrong way: whenever we
make a mistake, we want to be punished.
Some years ago, one of the new entrants to my monk factory
was a young man who had been having a hard time but was
a good guy. One day he got into the kitchen in the afternoon
and sneaked some food and made himself a sandwich. He was
breaking one of the eight precepts, which you need to keep if you
are training to be a monk—not eating in the afternoon. So, being
a good guy, he came up and confessed to me, and I said: “Never
mind. Just learn next time not to do it. Everyone makes mistakes,
I’m not going to throw you out of the monastery because of that.
It’s not a capital offence, and I’m not going to call the police. So
just never do it again. Thanks for telling me.” But he was not
happy! He said, “Look! That’s not good enough. I need penance.
I need to be punished to stop me doing it again!”
Looking at him, I realised that he’s not going to be able to buy
just plain forgiveness. He needs to learn some forgiveness. So I
thought about the traditional punishment in Australia. Many of
you know that Australia started off as a penal colony. The British
sent all their felons to Australia where they were treated very
harshly and one of the punishments was whipping, which was
called ‘the cat of nine tails’, usually shortened as ‘the cat’. So I
said to this young man, “Well, then, we’ll give you 50 strokes of
‘the cat’.” And this young monk trainee went white. He thought
Ajahn Brahm was going to whip him! But then I explained to
him what 50 strokes of the cat really means in Buddhism. I said
that in our monastery we had a cat, and he needed to look for
that cat and stroke it 50 times! 😄 “Learn some compassion, for
24 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
goodness’ sake! Maybe stroking that cat 50 times will teach you
how to be kind, to be forgiving, to be soft and be sensitive, and
not so macho male!”
Why is it that we want to punish ourselves? Does it really
help at all? Punishing ourselves is what guilt is all about. Instead
of punishing ourselves, we have this metta and say: “The door of
my heart is open to me no matter what I’ve done.” Sometimes
you just made a mistake. That’s all.
So when you look into the past, you give it metta and compas-
sion. Whenever you tread in the dog poo, never wipe it off your
feet but always take it back to your house and dig it under your
mango tree. One year later your mangoes will be sweeter than
before. But when you taste that mango, you must remember that
what you’re really tasting is dog poo transformed. 😉
When you understand this simile, all of that poo from your
life, all of the terrible things you’ve done or which have been
done to you, they are just fertiliser or opportunities for growth.
It makes mangoes or your life sweeter. So don’t get negative but
give it metta, and the next time anything terrible happens to you,
you can say, “Whoopee! More fertiliser for my mango tree!”
If you are going to recall your past, forgive all the rotten
things which have happened and have metta towards yourself
so that you can get rid of all the guilt and suffering. And don’t
26 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
❦
3 Metta to the Future
I don’t know if you ever rode a bicycle when you were young
and can remember what it was like. I remember as an eleven-
year-old getting a bicycle for the first time. Getting on the bicycle
and trying to balance, I was so scared of falling off. I was so afraid
that I gripped the handlebars so tightly that my knuckles went
white, and my body was rigid. And because it wasn’t bending
round the curves, I kept falling off. It was only later that I realised
metta to the future 🙔 31
that if you’re going to ride a bicycle, you’ve got to relax, and not
tense up.
yourself as who you are and that gives you this positive attitude
and gratitude towards the future.
I know that many people have a lot of fear about committing
themselves to relationships, to getting married, to setting them-
selves up with a partner, or changing their jobs. I spend a lot of
time counselling people who are wondering: Should I marry this
guy? Should I set up with this woman? should I change my job? I
keep saying to them: ‘Stop worrying about it. Just do it.’ 😀
If you found out that you married the wrong person, you’d
learn a lot from that mistake. It’s all learning experience. It’s
not the end of the world. There’s no such thing as the end of the
world. Life keeps on going.
I know there are some supposedly religious groups which
try to make you afraid; they hate the talks on loving kindness
towards the future. They want to make you fear that something
terrible is going to happen or the end of the world is coming. Do
you remember the year 2000? At that time, some people were
saying that it was the end of the world. But the world never ends.
When I was a young person, people were generally more
confident, and they weren’t so afraid and didn’t get these things
called panic attacks. Many people these days get panic attacks
where they freeze up and can’t do anything. Sometimes in the
most inopportune moments they tense up so much that they
can’t even scream. How can we stop these things, these intense
fears which paralyse our lives?
How do you deal with raw fear and panic attacks when they’re
upon you? What I’ve said so far is great in theory, but what can
we actually do when it happens?
36 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
Grasshopper, you will have to walk across that plank. You will
have to overcome your fear and keep your balance because if you
fall in, I won’t be able to save you. Your bones will add to those
who already fell in.”
Poor little Grasshopper was so terrified.
The master took little Grasshopper out of that very dark room
into the temple courtyard, where there was a piece of wood of
exactly the same size as the plank in the dark room. The wood
was supported by two bricks on either end on the ground of the
courtyard. “Grasshopper,” the Master said, “For the next seven
days all you need to do is to learn how to balance. Learn how to
walk on that plank because in seven days’ time you will take the
test of walking over the acid.”
So the next seven days, Grasshopper learnt how to balance.
It was easy to do as the plank was quite wide and thick. Anyone
could do it blindfolded and backwards.
After seven days came the real test. Grasshopper was taken
once more into this usually locked room in the back of the temple
which everybody kept well clear off. In the room, where there was
the plank over the acid and the bones at the bottom, the master
said, “Grasshopper, get on the end of the plank.”
Even with seven days of training, Grasshopper did not want
to go. Eventually with great reluctance, poor little Grasshopper
stood on the end of the plank. Then, he looked back at this master,
pleading for some compassion. His eyes said: “Master, please
don’t make me walk!”
“Walk!” said the Master.
metta to the future 🙔 39
Without fear,
we’re confident and can find success.
And our happiness levels rise and rise.
❦
4 Metta to the Present
So many of the stories that I tell are about how loving kindness
can save people from great injury. One of the stories in my book
Opening the Door of Your Heart, on the power of loving kindness, is
about a monk who many years ago was meditating in a forest
when a big king cobra came to visit him. I don’t know if any
of you’ve ever seen a king cobra. I’ve only seen one when I was
in Thailand. The villagers there had a name for it in the local
dialect: ‘one-step snake’. When I asked them: “Why do you call
it the one-step snake?” “Because once it bites you, that’s all you
have to live—one step!”
One day while this monk, together with many disciples, was
meditating in the evening, a king cobra came and slithered right
up to him, raised its head, opened its hood, and hissed ‘Sssss…’
What would you do? It’s a waste of time running—those snakes
run faster than you! What this monk did was to raise his hand,
patting the king cobra on the head and saying, “Thank you so
much for visiting me.” What he discovered was that the king
cobra liked his head patted! 😄
The power of metta or loving kindness is so strong that even
king cobras do not harm or hurt such a person. The animals look
metta to the present 🙔 43
You should cultivate compassion not only for others but also
for yourself. You can give loving kindness to your own body when
there’s sickness or pain. I have done this many times. When I
have an ache or a pain which sometimes drives me crazy, I’ll say.
“Pain, the door of my heart is open to you. Come in.” Most of pain
is wanting to get rid of something, something which is a part
of nature. If you practise strong loving kindness in the moment,
you can even do that to the pain in your own body, and you’ll be
amazed at how that pain can vanish in a short period of time.
The first time I did this was when I was a young monk in
Thailand. I got a toothache in the middle of the night. At that
time there were no aspirins or Panadol or any painkillers in our
monastery, nor was there any phone—not even a landline, let
alone mobile phones. We were in a remote monastery. We were
supposed to be forest monks who could endure no matter what
happened. 😢 I was trying to endure, but it was driving me crazy. I
tried to meditate my way out of that pain. I sat down, crossed my
legs, and focused on my breath… It was too painful! I could not
get rid of this exploding pain in my jaw. When sitting meditation
didn’t work, I tried walking meditation, but I had to stop that
because I wasn’t walking—I was running! When you’re in pain,
you can’t do anything slowly. The next thing I tried was to do
some Buddhist chanting to get rid of this pain as people say that
sometimes chanting has magical power. Though I didn’t really
believe it, I was desperate and would try anything. Then, I had to
stop the chanting because I realised if I had carried on, I would
be shouting it so loud that I’d wake up everybody including the
villagers two kilometres away! 😄
metta to the present 🙔 45
There are a few times in your life that you may come across
this phenomenon when you feel stranded with nowhere to go.
All your strategies have been exhausted, and you just can’t stand
the pain a moment longer. So the only thing you can do in such a
situation, instead of getting rid of the pain, is to accept it and let
it be. “Pain, the door of my heart is open to you. I’m not trying to
get rid of you anymore. I’ll just be with you and be kind to you.”
When I did that, the most amazing happened—the pain dis-
appeared. It vanished! And in its place was happiness and peace.
The most unexpected experience I could ever imagine. I medi-
tated most peacefully and had a short sleep for one or two hours.
When I woke up, I had a very slight toothache.
What I learnt from that experience was that so much pain
was mental, not physical. “I don’t want this! Why should I suffer
this? This isn’t fair!” This pain is countered by loving kindness. In-
stead of fighting, dismissing, and trying to get rid of the painful
contents of your day, you embrace it, allow it to be, make peace
with it and give it loving kindness. You have metta to the moment.
By developing such strong loving kindness, you will find how,
amazingly, it can be applied to anything unpleasant which you
have to deal with in life.
There was an emperor who was away from his palace. While
he was away, a terrible, ugly, stinking demon came in. As he
walked into the palace, he was so terrifying that all the soldiers
guarding the palace froze in terror, allowing the monster to go
right onto the emperor’s chair, onto the throne and sit there.
As soon as the monster sat in the emperor’s chair, the minis-
ters and soldiers all woke up and said, “Get out of here! Who do
you think you are? That’s our emperor’s chair. You don’t belong
there. Get out!” With those few angry words thrown at him, the
monster grew an inch bigger, uglier, smellier and the language
coming out of his mouth got worse. That made the ministers
even more upset, and some soldiers got out their swords, some
threatened him with clubs, others shook their fists. But every un-
kind word, every unkind deed, even unkind thought just made
the monster grow bigger, uglier, smellier, and his language got
more crude.
This had been going on for some time when the emperor
came back. By this time the demon was so big that it took up half
of the throne room and it was so ugly and terrifying that even
Hollywood couldn’t imagine anything so ugly. And the stench
coming off his body would even make a maggot sick! The lan-
guage coming from his mouth was worse than what you’d hear
when Australia lost a cricket match.
The reason why this guy was the emperor was that he was
smarter than anyone else. He saw this ugly, terrifying demon
and he knew what to do straightaway. He said, “Welcome. Thank
you for coming to visit me. Why have you taken so long to pop
in? Has anyone got you anything to drink yet? We have ginseng
metta to the present 🙔 47
tea, we have earl grey, we have orange juice… What would you
like?”
With those few kind words, the demon grew an inch smaller,
less ugly, less offensive. Everybody in the palace now realised
their mistake. They then started being kind to the monster. Some-
one took hold of his feet and gave him a foot massage. Some-
one asked, “Do you want something to eat? How about a pizza,
monster-sized?” Every kind word the demon heard made him
grow smaller and less offensive.
In a very short time, he was back to the size when he first
came in, but they didn’t stop there. The palace staff carried on
with kindness until the demon was so tiny, and finally with one
last act of kindness the demon vanished completely away. That’s
how they got rid of the demon that entered the emperor’s palace.
When the Buddha told the story, he said that we called that
monster an anger-eating demon. If you give it anger, it just gets
bigger and more offensive. There are many anger-eating demons
in this world. For some of you, that might be your husband. 😉
You get angry with him, he gets bigger, uglier, and the language
certainly gets worse. Your wife could be an anger-eating demon,
too. So you realise that if you give those anger-eating demons
anger, the problem gets worse.
Anger-eating demons are not just people. Cancers are noto-
rious anger-eating demons. When they are in your body, you say,
“Get out! You don’t belong in here!” When you feel such anger
or such stress, it produces a growth in negativity. What do you
expect? It gets bigger, uglier, and more dangerous.
48 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
I don’t do that just for babies, for king cobras or for people
in my monastery. I practise loving kindness to whatever I do
in my life. Whether it is taking a funeral service or counselling
someone, I will say, “The door of my heart is open to whatever I
have to do now.” I give metta to this moment. I embrace it and
enjoy it because this is the only moment I’ll ever have.
metta to the present 🙔 53
This is the only life you have. So what should we do with this
moment called ‘now’? Please care for it. Have loving kindness to
this moment.
❦
5 Views and Intentions
Every religion has a view, and they all think their view is the
right one and everyone else’s is the wrong one. What happens in
religions becomes just like husbands and wives, always arguing
who is right and who is wrong.
The Buddha gave a wonderful teaching on what Right View is:
whatever teachings which lead to a state of peace, stillness and
harmony, which lead to the disappearance of the problems of life,
which lead to ceasing, which lead to enlightenment (Nirvana in
Sanskrit)—these are the teachings of the Buddha. That is Right
View.
In other words, what tells you what right view is, is not by
whether it is in accordance with some discourses, some texts or
any authority, but by what it actually does in your life, in other
people’s lives and in society.
“Does this view create peace and harmony in your world? Or,
does it create the opposite?” Once you get the answer to those
questions quite clear in your head, then your intentions will
become pure.
is it my perspective? It is MY perspective.
When I hold my hand where it belongs, which is at the end of
my arm, the hand hasn’t got smaller, but now I’ve got perspective.
I can see my hand and I can see every one of you as well.
This is one of the problems of perspective, which causes prob-
lems in our world. Sometimes we hold something so close to us
that we can’t see anything else. We’ve lost our perspective. We
then get deceived and deluded.
Another thing about Right View is an issue on organ dona-
tion. Here in Australia, there are fewer organs donated than the
number of people who need them. In Buddhism, there’s nothing
wrong with being an organ donor. I’m happy to donate all of my
organs. 😀
But why are people afraid of doing that? Some people, even
some Buddhist traditions, say that if you give your eye to some-
body, when you go to heaven, you will have only one eye. That’s
really crazy.
You should know what it feels like inside when you give some-
thing. How do you feel when you give something to someone
who really needs it? When you share, when you give some food,
when you give a donation, when you just give someone a lift,
when you just give someone time, how do you feel? It always
makes you happy! It’s good karma. It’s love. It’s charity. In all
religions we know, that’s a wonderful thing to do. So you don’t
have to be afraid that you’re going to lose out.
Also, you don’t need those organs anymore when you are
dead. As monks, we haven’t had any alcohol for many years, so
views and intentions 🙔 61
So he had the operation, and his kidney was taken out and
put inside a man who was theoretically his opposition. What a
beautiful and inspiring thing that is! This is true spirituality.
True spirituality is
being kind and non-judgmental.
Anything which is very valuable, you care for it. You look
after it only when you realise it can be broken very easily. So
when you realise that relationships are impermanent, they’re like
glass, having a crack, they can finish very easily, you’ll look after
them and put effort into them. Just because your sweetheart says,
“We’re going to get married and I’m going to love you forever,
darling,” it doesn’t mean it’s going to be true. Of course, everyone
says that. But don’t believe it.
A relationship is fragile, which means you really have to care
for it, put effort into it, and then when it does break in the end,
you will say, “Yeah, I expected that.” When you know that this is
part of nature, it means that at the end of the relationship, you
don’t have a terrible surprise: “Why did he do that? Why did he
run out?”
It happens to so many other couples, and you think it won’t
happen to you? You think that you’re somehow special? That
you’ve got this special, unique relationship, not like other people?
We like to think like that, don’t we? That’s called conceit.
But when we realise that our relationship, like others’, is
fragile, we’ll put more effort into looking after it and we will care
for each other. And how do we do that? Right View. Let go, be
kind and be gentle—the three Right Intentions. Can’t we do that
in our relationship? Your husband has said something stupid,
he called you a pig. Let it go. How many of you hold on to it year
after year?
views and intentions 🙔 65
are things that I didn’t do which I should have done, I’m sorry.
Please forgive me. I really want this relationship to carry on. I
love you.”
No matter what a person’s done, if they ask for forgiveness
with sincerity, in this Buddhist tradition, you have to give them
that forgiveness. Then, the other person does the same. So once a
year, on your anniversary or whenever you choose, do this beau-
tiful little ceremony with your partner. Let go of the past with a
forgiveness ceremony.
It does not have to be about people relationships only. In the
last 12 months if you’ve done something really bad and you’re
really hurting because of it, just come up to a Buddha statue or
a place which represents peace and kindness to you and do a
little forgiveness ceremony. “Whatever I’ve done over the past 12
months by body, speech or mind, intentional or unintentional,
I felt I was between a rock and a hard place, and I didn’t really
have much of a choice, but I feel bad about it anyway, so please
forgive me.”
What a beautiful right view that is—to let go of the pain
of the past instead of carrying it around with us. The pain you
carry around with you gives you depression and stops you from
enjoying life and having a good relationship.
Forgiveness is a very important part of Right View. It’s called
‘letting go’ and ‘being kind’.
Forgiveness
is letting go and being kind.
views and intentions 🙔 67
It’s amazing that over the last 20 or 30 years the modern way
to perform funeral services has changed. No more wearing black
and tearing your hair out. It has become about celebrating a life.
You go there and you hear all the beautiful tales about what that
person did, even some of the stupid things they did.
I remember one funeral service where a best friend of the
guy who died said how he made some sort of a bomb and blew
up a toilet on a construction site when he was about 14 years
of age. Just kids being kids. This made the whole thing human.
They were celebrating a wonderful life with all the stupid and
wonderful things a person did in their life.
68 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
When you care for your relationship like it’s your most price-
less possession, you will not drop it, you will not knock it, and
then it will last a long time. And when it does bust up after you’ve
given your best, you don’t blame anybody and you don’t feel
guilty or angry. You don’t think there’s something wrong with
you. You’re just like everybody else.
Glasses will break. If you look after them, they’ll last longer.
And when they break, you know that it’s part of life. Is this a
Buddhist or atheist teaching? I don’t know, but it’s just truth,
isn’t it? It’s common sense.
So please be kind, be generous, let go and share. Those are
the Buddhist Right Intentions, which you will have when you
have Right View.
There is Right View according to the books, but the Right
View which I’ve talked about here is the Right View which goes
across all faiths or no faiths, and all cultures. It creates a lot
of peace and harmony. It breaks barriers whether it’s between
people, races, genders, or sexual orientations. We live in a small
world now. We have to learn to live together, and this is the way
to do it.
❦
6 Anicca—Nothing Lasts
My teacher Ajahn Chah said that food for the body was not
enough. So the most important meal is happening now because
this talk is food for the heart. 😉
Just like any food, sometimes we have junk food and some-
times we have healthy food. It’s the same with the things you
put in your mind. Sometimes it’s junk food you put in the mind.
Do you know what junk food for the mind is? TV! And what’s
healthy food for the mind? Dharma!
For this series of talks on the three basic facts of existence,
I would like to start with anicca, which is often translated as
impermanence, but actually it’s more than impermanence.
You must have noticed at lunch just how fast things disap-
pear… from your plate. 😄 You also notice the joy of the taste lasts
for a moment and then it’s gone. Sometimes the expectation is
the most delicious. For many people, anticipation is the happy
part. As soon as you get it, the happiness or the wonderful taste
goes away so quickly.
When I was young monk, after seven years in Thailand, I
went back to England to visit my mother and I thought: ‘At last, I
can get some English food. Maybe I’ll get some chips!’ Finally, I
anicca—nothing lasts 🙔 71
did get some chips. A Thai man gave them to me. They did not
taste as nice as I had dreamt. Oh, what a let down!
Suffering arises
when we don’t understand reality,
when we have unrealistic expectations of life.
So it’s great to know that things pass, that we have our loved
ones come into our life and then they leave again.
Look at your children, where do they come from? It is like
inviting someone into your house for 18 or 19 years from the
street. You don’t know where they’re from or who they are. That’s
what you are doing with your children. They come with their
own karma from their previous places, and they stay with you for
a while, and they leave again. So you should understand from the
beginning that your job is just to nurture them for 19-20 years
and once they get their degree, you should say goodbye. But how
many of you can do that?
Can’t you be like the birds? They are so wise—they look after
their young, sitting on their eggs for such a long time, and after
they hatch, the parents fly around to find worms for them. Then,
they teach their young how to fly. Once their little chicks have
learnt to fly, they say goodbye to them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful
to be like that?
But you need to realise that your children don’t belong to you.
They’re impermanent. They go according to their karma. We go
according to our karma. If we can only realise that eventually our
children will leave and that things change, then we will be free.
I was telling a lady who was in trouble last night that no
matter how she is feeling now, things will change. There’s a story
of the emperor’s ring. It’s a wonderful story which helps heal
many people’s pain and suffering in this world.
anicca—nothing lasts 🙔 73
A long time ago, there was a young man who took over a
kingdom. Being a young man, he wasn’t all that skillful in run-
ning the business of a kingdom. So every time the kingdom was
going well, and people were happy, he would hold celebrations
and parties.
Because he was spending so much money in celebrations
and spending so much time enjoying himself, allowing other
people to enjoy themselves, the good economic times didn’t last
very long. When there were problems in the country, and unhap-
piness among the people, the king was so upset himself that he
was spending so much time in his room sulking and getting mis-
erable and depressed. And because of that the bad times seemed
to last longer.
No, he was not a very good ruler, but the ministers and his
advisers were very sharp, so they came up with a plan—they
asked a jeweler to make a special gold ring with words engraved
on the outside ‘This too will pass.’ Then, they presented the ring to
the ruler and asked him to wear it on all occasions. And because
he wore it all the time, he kept looking at it. When there were
problems in the kingdom or when there were so many things
to do, he would look at the ring and remember that this too will
pass. He would also look at the ring in the good times as well,
and realise that the time of prosperity, of health and comfort
would pass, as well.
What that meant was that during the bad times, he would
never get so upset or depressed that he couldn’t do any work. The
bad times never lasted so long, either.
During good times, he realised that this was also imperma-
74 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
nent. So even in the good times, he would work and would not
rest. That way the good times lasted so long, and the bad times
were so short that he became a very successful ruler, loved by
everybody.
This is the simile of our lives. We are the ruler of our body,
our family and our surroundings. Sometimes we experience
difficulties and suffering. What do some people do? They get
depressed and sulk. As they don’t do anything, it means the bad
times last longer than they should.
So whenever there’s any difficulty, always remember that this
too will pass. But when things are going well, always remember
this too will pass. Remembering that fact of life, you can put all
the energy you can into this moment because this moment is
valuable, and you won’t let it pass without enjoying it. If things
get difficult, it doesn’t matter—this too will pass.
‘This too will pass’ gives us hope, gives us energy, gives us a
way of looking forward. The truth of the fact is:
Happiness is a pause
between two moments of suffering.
And suffering is a pause
between two moments of happiness.
76 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
Without comparison,
you would not understand
what happiness and pain truly is.
and your loved ones all have got a crack in them, and one day it
will open up and everyone will die, so you should care for them.
People who contemplate anicca this way don’t become cold and
heartless. They become kind and caring.
You have to say how much you care for them now
because things change and opportunities pass.
a personal friend. The first words of the doctor were: “Is your
wife at home?” Why would he say that? There must be something
wrong. So straightaway he responded, “What’s wrong? Actually,
my wife is here.” “Sorry to report that you’ve got a rare type of
blood cancer. It’s untreatable and terminal.”
This man thought he was in the best of health, but like most
people, when they get a shock from their doctor, he asked, “How
long have I got to live?” The doctor told him two months, or three
if he was lucky.
What happened when he realised the impermanence of his
life? He changed the priorities of his life. He’d always promised
his family to take them to Europe. Now, he had to go. There was
no time to dither. He then sold his business. He bought tickets
for him and his family and booked the best hotels. This was the
last time for him and his family to enjoy each other’s company.
He was holding the tickets in his hand, so the story goes,
when the phone rang again. It was his doctor. “I don’t know how
to tell you this,” said the doctor, “I mixed up two of my patients
with the same name. I gave you the wrong results. You are per-
fectly healthy.”
You may have heard stories like this. Even in medicine some-
times mistakes happen. However, this man never sued his doctor;
he never got angry at him. He went on holiday with his fam-
ily, had a good time, and some money left over to start a new
business, which became quite successful. But this time he didn’t
work so hard because that experience made him realise that time
passes so quickly and what’s really important is not his wealth
or his business success. What’s most important is his family, his
80 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
❦
7 Dukkha—Suffering
take a second job. A lot of people think that after they’ve bought
a house and paid off their bank debt, then they’ll be happy. In
the meantime, they have kids. As soon as they have kids, the first
couple of months are okay, but after a while, they think that when
their kids grow up and leave home, then they’ll be free and then
they will be happy. But when the kids leave home, they’re not
happy because they’re getting close to retirement. They think
when they retire, then they will be happy. However, when they
retire, that is the time when people start going to temples and
churches. Do you know why they go to temples and churches
when they are old? Because they think if they go to the temple
and make a lot of good karma, when they die, they’ll be happy!
I’ve noticed that most of my life, and most of other people’s
lives, the idea is when I get this then I will be happy. When I
win the lottery, when I get rid of my husband, or when I get
enlightened, then I will be happy. I’ve realised that we are missing
the point there.
Suffering is thinking:
when I get something else,
I’ll be happy.
It’s called craving. It’s called desire. When you want some-
thing, it means you are not with what you want, so there is a
tension there. I want, but I haven’t got it yet. This means you have to
work hard, you have to struggle. You’re not content with what you
are or what you have. This is what the Buddha called suffering.
That word suffering needs to be understood because when I
realised that the Buddha said everything is suffering, I got quite
86 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
lady. Her trouble was that she was married and was having a hard
time, a lot of difficulty, a lot of trouble and she was wondering
whether she and her husband were suitable or compatible. I said,
“Look, when you are married to someone, sure it can be suffering,
but it can be a lot of fulfilment as well, so you should really put
more energy and effort in to make it work.”
I then gave her a few tips on how to make her marriage work.
I’m not against marriage; I was just having fun making jokes
about marriages. 😁
Life will be much better if you get your priorities right. If you
are in a marriage, your love for each other is more important
than being right. So remember why you married that person and
make that person important in your eyes. It happens very often
in a marriage that oftentimes we think our partner takes us for
granted and we’re not important to them anymore. We feel that
we want to talk to them but they’re not listening. There’s a lack
of communication. So it’s not hard to get the marriage back on
track.
You should always practice the philosophy from Tolstoy’s “The
Three Questions” with your partner: When is the most important
time? Now. Who is the most important person? The one you’re
with. What is the most important thing to do? To care.
Now is the most important time, so it doesn’t matter how
long you’ve been married. Now is the most important time to
tell your partner how much you love them and how much you
appreciate them and how much you care for them. If you’ve done
something wrong or said a stupid thing, now is the most im-
portant time to say sorry. Saying sorry costs so little, and you
88 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
get so much in return. It shows that you care, and that’s what a
woman or man wants in marriage—to be given importance and
to know the other person cares for them. You now have a very
simple formula for a successful and intimate marriage.
If your partner is doing the same thing to you, when you
are with them, when you are talking, when you are together, you
realise in this moment you are the most important person to your
partner. That’s called love, that’s called togetherness. They are
valuing you and you are valuing them, and then the relationship
just grows from that.
To care—how does care happen or how is it expressed? Care
happens in many different ways. When you care, you’re coming
from the right place, it always works incredibly well.
After teaching the elder sister, I turned to the younger one.
“What’s your problem, madam?” She hadn’t got a husband and
she wanted one desperately!
I told her, “You’ve got a single woman’s suffering. And if you
get a partner in life, you won’t have single woman’s suffering
anymore, but you will have husband suffering instead.”
Then, I turned to the elder sister, “If you left your husband,
you wouldn’t have husband suffering anymore, but you would
have a single woman’s suffering.”
I’ll finish off this part with one of the secrets to end craving.
This again is a story from my book Open the Door of Your Heart.
It’s the story of a monk who went to prison to teach prisoners.
After many weeks the prisoners invited him to stay behind for tea.
They started to ask him what it was like in a forest monastery—
how we have to get up very early at 4 o’clock, how we have to work
very hard, and there’s no sex, no sports, no television, no radio,
no music. We meditate all day, sleep on the floor, eat one meal a
day all in the same bowl. We don’t get what we want.
The prisoners were actually very surprised that prison is
so much easier than in a forest monastery. Physically it’s more
comfortable being in jail than being a monk. The monastery
is more austere and physically harder. So one of the prisoners,
out of misplaced compassion for their monk friend who they
had got to love and not thinking about what he was saying, said,
“It’s so terrible, so hard in your monastery! Why don’t you come
dukkha—suffering 🙔 93
here and stay with us instead?” The prisoner invited the monk
to stay in jail! When he realised what he was saying, he burst out
laughing. 😄
Why is it that there is a waiting list of people trying to join an
ascetic monastery but that there’s a waiting list of people trying
to get out of jail? The point is: people who are in the monastery
want to be there, but in a prison, people don’t want to be there.
That is the main difference. From that story, I realised that life
has many prisons for you.
Contentment
is the secret to the end of suffering.
94 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
You may think that if only you get that promotion, then you’ll
be happy, but if you get that promotion with more responsibility,
you’ll have to work harder and you’ll get more stress.
So whatever you’ve got is good enough. “Okay, I’m not getting
the best salary, but this is good enough.” “I haven’t got the most
beautiful body in the world, but this is good enough.” “I haven’t
got the best kids in the world, but this is good enough.” When you
have this beautiful ‘good enough’ attitude, then you are content.
It doesn’t mean you’re lazy and don’t work hard.
You don’t work hard to get something; you work hard to
give. That’s the difference. Too many people work hard to get
something back, but real effort, real love is not to get but to give.
How can I help the company? How can I help my family? How
can I help my society? This is the meaning of life.
the other is getting it.” The first cause of suffering is not getting
what you want, and the second cause of suffering is getting what
you want because you’ll find it’s not what you expected, and it
disappoints you.
❦
8 Anatta—Nobody There
This is the last session of our series of talks on the three basic
facts of existence in Buddhism. It is about a very big issue: ‘Who
are you?’ or ‘Are you there at all?’
Here, we are going to go to the deepest question to life. This
person inside of you, who came here today, who goes from life to
life—what is it really all about? It’s a strange thing when we talk
about who we are because the more we have a solid sense of self,
the bigger the ego we have, the more problems we cause in life.
It’s having a big ego that causes pride. Are you a proud person,
too proud to admit you make mistakes sometimes? How many
people here have never made a mistake? Put your hand up if
you’ve never made a mistake. 😉 Proud people never think they’ve
made a mistake. Or, they try to hide it under the carpet and
pretend that nobody’s noticed.
There are wonderful stories about a character called Nasrud-
din. (Note: Mullah Nasruddin Khodja is recorded as a famous
98 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
fierce. I was fierce that day! I gave a sermon about looking after
the gifts which people gave you.
“You never bought that hammer. It’s the gift of kind people. If
they saw that hammer left out there rusty, what would they think?
You’re spoiling their faith. They’d think what’s the purpose of
giving these things to monks who are so careless. They don’t even
bother to put the tools away after they’ve used them! This is not
on. This is bad karma. You should not do these things!”
Sometimes when you give a talk, people are lounging this
way and that way. But that day all the monks were sitting up
straight. I really hammered them this time. I really gave them
a fire and brimstone sermon. Not one of them confessed. And
that was the most disappointing. But maybe it was because they
were all scared. I must admit I was a bit tough. I really did go a
bit over the top with my fierceness.
I was very disappointed. At least, if you’ve done something
wrong, admit it. But no one admitted. When I went out of the
hall after that, I felt really disappointed with the monks under my
training. Why can’t they say sorry? I would have forgiven them.
As I walked out, I understood… I had an insight… I understood
now why no one would confess. I remembered who had left that
hammer out! It was me! And I had forgotten all about it until
after I had scolded all the monks! 😅
It was one of the most embarrassing times of my life as a
monk. If I had remembered first, it would have been much less
embarrassing. What did I do? I had to go back into the dharma
hall and say, “Sit down, everybody. I’ve found out who left the
hammer out.”
anatta—nobody there 🙔 101
Don’t be so proud.
Say sorry.
A lot of the time it’s pride which does things. It’s the ego
which asks, “How can I tell my friends? How can I live this down?”
Don’t worry what your friends think. It’s your feelings and your
future that are more important.
but I got nervous. Why was I nervous? It was because I was scared
about what she would think of me.
When you get to your forties, as the saying goes, you get
what we call self-confidence. Most people at this stage, in general,
don’t care what other people think of them, they just go and do
it anyway. You are yourself. You can ask silly questions and don’t
care what other people think of you. But the best time comes in
your sixties…
In your twenties, you care what other people think of you. In
your forties, you don’t care what other people think of you. In your
sixties, you finally discover that people are not thinking about
you anyway. Everybody is thinking about themselves! Everybody
is concerned about themselves.
You don’t have to worry what people think of you. Just be
yourself—whatever that happens to be. When you don’t have to
be concerned what other people think of you, you don’t have to
defend your ego and yourself. And who are you anyway?
When you haven’t got a fixed idea about who you are,
you can be anyone you want to be.
wherever you go, you have to fit in to the culture of that place.
That’s why you can actually change and adapt to different people.
That’s the sign of a great monk. You could never pin him down to
what he was or who he was because he was no one at all—he was
empty. When you understand the teaching of non-self, when you
know there’s no one in here, no fixed entity, you are always able
to change.
I don’t know if you ever did well at school. If you thought you
were no good, you would be no good. As a schoolteacher, I was
very careful never to think that someone was bad at anything.
That was actually creating a self.
I once experimented with one child in my class who had come
bottom in mathematics the year before. Knowing he came bot-
tom, I wanted to do an experiment to see whether it was because
he was a self who just couldn’t do maths, or it was something
else. So for one whole year I gave him special attention and en-
couragement. At the end of the year, he came top in maths. It
surprised me and everyone else. It surprised him the most. It
was unfair on all the other children, I admit that. Nevertheless,
it proved an important thing to me: there is no one who can’t do
maths. There is no one who can’t do sports. There is no one who
can’t do meditation.
And that’s why when you see highly attained monks or nuns,
it’s amazing how they can do different things. This is simply
because they’ve got a plastic, malleable, changeable self, which
can be bent and changed into whatever they want it to be. I
saw Ajahn Chah doing that so often. He could be a very, very
kind counsellor in one moment and the next moment he could
be a fierce master, and the next he could be laying bricks with
everybody else and sharing jokes.
106 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
to last as long as it should because the driver, the will, does not
know its job.
And other times your bus journey passes through some very
ugly, distressing territory or what we call the toxic waste dumps
of life—when you’re having a lot of pain, difficulty, distressing
experiences in life. So you tell the bus driver to speed up out of
there. It is similar to when you try to tell your will: “Please find a
way to solve this problem. Please get out of this pain as soon as
possible.” But very often when life is difficult, the bus driver slows
down or even stops sometimes. The terrible suffering times thus
last longer than they should.
What do you do when you have suffering? The trouble is that
you have to find that bus driver—the will—to teach them how to
drive the bus better, to slow down in the happy times and to rush
on in the painful times. You have to find out who is in control,
where they are and then you can teach this controller who drives
your life to experience more happiness and less pain.
Where do you think your will resides? It resides deep inside
of you. When we do meditation, we always go inside, deep into
the moment, into the body, into the silence, into the mind. You
then see deep inside yourself until you come to the bus driver’s
seat. You see the source of your will. In this deep meditation,
you get one of those powerful deep insights which changes your
whole life.
finished.
Accompanied by two Thai laymen, he was coming along the
path in the opposite direction. He was on his way back to the
car to go back to his monastery. As I came up to him, he looked
straight through me—like only powerful masters can do, to check
me out. He’d seen from the smile on my face that I had just
emerged from a state of deep meditation, so he decided to try to
enlighten me. He looked at me, and he barked, “Brahmavamso!”
to get my attention, and then he asked the question: “Why?”
There was the opportunity for seeing the depth of all things.
It was a fast way to enlightenment. But I was stupid, and all I
could think of saying was: “I don’t know.”
Ajahn Chah did what he always did when we were absolutely
dumb—he just laughed his head off. Then, he controlled his fea-
tures and looked straight into my eyes once more.“Brahmavamso,
I will tell you the answer. If anybody asks that question ‘Why?’
again. This is the answer: Mai mee arai.” Mai mee arai is Thai, mean-
ing ‘There is nothing’. Then, he looked at me and asked, “Do you
understand?” And I said, “Yes.” He shook his head and said, “No,
you don’t.” 😄
That’s one of the best teachings of non-self. The answers to
the questions ‘Why?’, ‘Where does this all come from?’, ‘Who is
this in there?’, or ‘What is this knower or doer mind that you take
to be you?’ The answer to the question is: there’s nothing.
It’s tough to do, but it’s the only way. You can’t understand
this, just by thinking. But one day when you’re meditating very
deeply, you’ll see the source of ‘will’ and you’ll see it disappear.
You’ll see the source of knowing, and you’ll see that it vanishes, as
well. You’ll understand that in the heart of all things is emptiness.
There’s no one in here. It’s like a rainbow or a cloud in the sky.
When you rise high, you’ll see that it’s just mist, nothing solid.
When you can see that there’s no one in there, then all grasp-
ing finishes. Then, you can be whoever you are or no one at all.
anatta—nobody there 🙔 113
Then, you are free. Who is Ajahn Brahm? It’s just an illusion with
no solid core.
❦
9 Karma Without Belief
The subject of this talk is the Buddhist idea of karma. How can
we understand that idea, not just with belief, but through some
experience or some deeper understanding?
The problem with modern life is that we are asked to believe
in so many things and sometimes in something that doesn’t
make much sense. You may say the same with the law of karma.
If it’s something you just have to believe in, then you’re not going
to get involved in such a thing because beliefs are uncertain. But
can we really understand karma in a much deeper way without
the need to rely upon belief ?
The first thing I always like to impress upon people is that
this law of karma is not about the common simplistic idea that
karma means if you punched your mother when you were young,
you’re going to have hay fever in your nose for the rest of your
life. 😁 Or, whatever you’re experiencing now is because you’ve
done something similar to somebody else in the past. That idea
of action and punishment is something which has never made
sense to me at all. It is far too naive and simplistic.
When you try to find out ‘Why is this happening to me? Is this
because of some bad karma I did in the past?’ it’s not very helpful
karma without belief 🙔 115
because you can’t work out why these things are happening to
you. It happens. Thinking that it’s happened because you did
something bad in the past is very negative, and it gets you into a
guilt trip. This is something which I’ve tried to encourage you to
get rid of.
About 30 years ago, I went to see a doctor here in Byford, and
while waiting for the doctor to call me in, somebody who knew
me came into the doctor’s surgery. He saw me and said, “I never
expected to see you in here.”
I felt really guilty! I’m a monk who meditates and leads a
nice peaceful lifestyle and doesn’t get involved in the stresses of
normal life, so I’m supposed to be healthy, living a good lifestyle.
He made me feel guilty about being in a doctor’s surgery.
But what’s wrong with being ill? Imagine that all these years
you’ve lived as a human being, and you have never had a day of
sickness in your life, you would be weird! You’d be so strange
that the medical establishment would want to get you into their
universities and do all sorts of tests on you. The point is: sickness
is natural.
Also, when you’re having a good time, enjoy it. There’s noth-
ing wrong with enjoying yourself and being happy.
Some years ago, I was counselling a person who was having
a very good time but was feeling guilty about it. So I typed out a
letter and signed it, telling that person that it was a happiness
license. “I, Ajahn Brahm, spiritual director of the Buddhist So-
ciety of Western Australia, hereby grant you permission to be
happy.” I signed it for them so that they could put it on their wall
and remind themselves that there is nothing wrong with being
happy and they don’t need to feel guilty about it.
karma without belief 🙔 117
The law of karma means all options are open, and you can
do anything with what you’ve got right now. There’s no such
thing as hopelessness. That’s why you should do the very best
karma without belief 🙔 119
When you learn how to do this, your future gets happier and
happier. When a problem comes or whatever happens in your life,
instead of saying there’s something wrong and getting negative,
please think: “This is great! Let’s learn from this.”
Another issue is about making mistakes. How many of you
have never made a mistake? What happens when you make a
mistake? Do you feel embarrassed? No, you shouldn’t. You’re just
a human being. Isn’t it great that we’re allowed to make mistakes?
This thinking takes away a lot of guilt and, more importantly,
fear. Out in the world, if you make a mistake, you get told off
or you lose your job. Not in Bodhinyana monastery where I live.
When people here make a mistake, “Well done. You’re human.”
That’s why the place is a mess. 😁 No, it’s not a mess; it’s a very
happy place.
The thing which I’m most proud of about our monastery is
that people feel welcome. You don’t have to be perfect. You don’t
have to sit in the correct posture. If you don’t want to bow, don’t
bow and don’t feel guilty about it.
One time at Dhammaloka, our city centre, a lady sitting in the
corner over there fell asleep during my talk and started snoring.
Was there something wrong about that? No. The mistake was
when somebody tried to wake her up! I told them afterwards that
the woman had told me that she was one of those unfortunate
victims of domestic abuse and she was so afraid and so tense
in her house that she was not sleeping well. But here is the first
place in weeks where she felt safe. It’s the atmosphere you create
here that’s even more important than all the talks that are given.
The fact that she felt so safe that she could lie down and actually
karma without belief 🙔 121
Just take away the will to live, the will to die or the will to go
anywhere, and just be. 😀
Question: How can animals improve their karma?
Ajahn Brahm: One of my friends, a doctor in Melbourne, got
a big Labrador. She gave it the name ‘Chemo’. That’s a really weird
name, isn’t it? Why did she name it Chemo?
She said, “Because I’m training this dog to be one of the dogs
that go into wards with people who are very sick so that the
patients can pet and stroke that dog.”
karma without belief 🙔 125
❦
10 Total Listening
It’s like the old thing between husbands and wives; one starts
to talk and the other starts thinking: “Here we go again. Why
does he/she keep saying the same old thing? I’ve had enough of
this. Doesn’t he/she know that I’m tired too? I don’t need this
now!” Our partner has just started talking, and there’s already a
conversation going on between our ears to which we pay much
more attention than what our partner’s saying. We just can’t
listen.
total listening 🙔 129
Compassionate listener
Listen deeply
Meditation is
where you learn how to listen deeply.
In meditation, we learn how to be quiet
so that we hear and understand much more of life.
I listen to my body,
and then my body becomes a friend.
You may have a partner who doesn’t listen to you; how diffi-
cult is it to live with him/her? Now you can understand why your
body sometimes gets sick. It’s throwing a tantrum. It wants to
teach you a lesson. As the old joke goes: “Death is nature’s way of
telling you to slow down.”
total listening 🙔 135
Often when people get sick, it’s not that they suddenly get
cancer or heart disease, but that the illness has been growing
over many months, maybe years. The body often tells us that it
needs us to relax, rest or do exercise, but a lot of times we’re too
busy to listen. Only when you learn how to be quiet instead of
having inner chatter can you actually listen to the body and feel
its sensations. And if something’s wrong, you know it straight
away and thus can take a course of action to look after it.
Listen to your mind as well. When you listen to the mind, it’s
amazing what you’ll learn. Sometimes, it says: “I really need to
work a problem out.” Sometimes it says: “No, I’ve had enough. I
just want to rest.” What the mind wants most of the time is just a
bit of respect: to be listened to and appreciated rather than being
treated as a slave. Just like you would love some respect from
your boss. You’re trying your very best, but how often is it that
your boss gives you extra work and tells you off ? Similarly, your
body is saying: “I’m trying my best. Why do you keep pushing
me around?” Or, the mind is saying: “I’m trying my best to be
peaceful and happy. Just give me a break!”
You get a lot of benefits when you listen to your body and
your mind, and act accordingly. You trust that the body and the
mind know much better than you.
136 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
Kindness
End-of-life care
For those of you who are doctors, sometimes you have to treat
somebody who can’t explain what’s going on. “How do you feel?”
“It hurts.” “How does it hurt? Where does it hurt?” “Mmmm...
around here somewhere.” It can be hard to describe. What does a
doctor do? If you want to be a smart doctor or nurse, you should
do ‘total listening’. Totally listen so that you go very peaceful, very
quiet, with no thoughts nor ideas of what this person is going to
say. You just feel what they are really saying deep inside, and then
you’ll get some incredibly intuitive solutions to the problems.
The hindrances
Listening to life
We should listen not only to people and our body and mind, but
also to life.
A very beautiful way of relaxing is to go into a forest or to the
beach and listen to the sounds of the waves and the birds. There’s
always something happening in a forest and the wonderful thing
is: it’s happening now! 🤩 There are no echoes in forests. There
are no echoes on the beach. Whatever sound is occurring is right
in this present moment. It takes away all the busyness of the past
and the future.
You’re here, and that total listening gives you a sense of peace.
You’re listening to life as it’s happening, rather than a recording
or a preview. It’s real, and you realise: “This is where wisdom
comes from.” It gives you not only a lot of peace but also a lot of
wisdom. You’re listening not just to the birds but also to what’s
going on inside of you. You’re listening to peace, the inner peace
inside you. You’re getting to understand how this mind of yours
actually works.
To love
is to listen very deeply.
If you love your child, you can listen to them saying stupid
things, without judging them but allowing everything in.
Then, you totally listen to yourself. Though you may say stupid
things (I say a heap of stupid things 😁), you’re listening and lov-
ing and accepting, as well as listening to the reaction which hap-
pens inside you. At last, you’ll find some peace, some self-respect,
some acceptance of yourself.
When you listen to yourself, you’ll find out just how all judg-
ments and criticisms of yourself, which go on and on, are just
irrelevant so that they stop. Now you can listen to the peace in-
side your own heart, which has always been there but has been
disturbed.
Some people who come to our monasteries for the first time,
which are very quiet, speak louder than is necessary. At first,
I couldn’t figure out why. Now I understand that it’s because
they’re afraid of silence. Listen to silence, and it will soon comfort
you.
What you’re listening to is peace and contentment—the sound
of freedom. Don’t be afraid of it. Embrace it. It might be hard
142 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
I’ll finish off this talk with a wonderful story of Taoist master
Lao Tzu to sum up how, through listening, you understand very
deeply and enjoy so much of what you’ve previously missed.
Lao Tzu would go on a walk with his disciples every evening.
There was a golden rule: no one was allowed to speak during a
walk with the master. On one occasion he chose a new student
and as they were walking through the forest, they came to a ridge
in the mountains at sunset. It was such a glorious sunset that
the student forgot the rule and said, “Wow! What a beautiful
sunset.”
The master turned around, went back to the monastery, and
said that young man was not allowed to go on a walk with him
again. The other students said, “That’s a bit strict. It was only
a few words. Please give him a break. Anyway, what’s so wrong
about talking?”
The master replied, “When that student said, ‘What a beau-
tiful sunset,’ he wasn’t watching the sunset anymore, he was
watching the words ‘What a beautiful sunset.’ ”
If you understand the meaning of what Lao Tzu said, you
understand the power of silence. Every time you think: “Wow!
That’s a beautiful forest,” you’re not seeing the forest, you’re see-
ing the words. Every time you say, “What am I?” you’re not seeing
yourself, you’re seeing the question.
total listening 🙔 143
will not get angry. I’m going to be happy no matter what people
say. 😀
They can complain, they can criticise, they can praise me, but
I’m not going to be happy just because people have praised me.
They just haven’t got a clue what I’m up to. I’m going to be happy
myself. I know what I’m doing or why I did it, no one else does.
So this way other people’s complaints and criticisms are just like
hot air washing over you.
If that doesn’t work, you can imagine yourself to be what
the Buddha said: a lotus. The beautiful lotus flower is one of the
symbols of Buddhism. People can pour smelly water on a lotus,
but the water will just roll off, leaving no residual smell. People
can pour perfume over a lotus, but it too will just roll off and
leave no residue.
❦
11 Dealing With Addictions
Record it
Give it up temporarily
Empowerment
When you give up an addiction, you feel free. You feel good about
yourself as you’ve done something difficult. You feel empowered!
That degree of happiness and freedom is what often counteracts
you taking up that addiction again.
dealing with addictions 🙔 147
Addiction is a habit.
You do it without being aware of doing it.
beer’. Just tell yourself that. This is meant to break the habit. The
programming arouses mindfulness at the coalface of addiction
the first time you’re about to break. Otherwise, it becomes so
hard. A heroin addict told me: “I have to say no a thousand times
a day to keep off the heroin. I only have to say yes once, and I’m
back on it again.” He said it’s almost impossible. But you don’t
have to do it that way. All you need to do is to program your mind-
fulness; you don’t always have to be alert. Say to yourself: “I won’t
pick up that first piece of heroin,” and then go about your daily
business, not stressed, not tense, and you’ll find that when you
need the instruction, it will be there for you. That is how we get
our mindfulness to work on important parts of our life.
It’s not just addictions to things like drugs and gambling and
pornography and other bad stuff we have in life, but also one
of the things we get addicted to that is such a great shame is
bad speech. Husbands and wives or partners speak badly to each
other. People can get into this terrible habit of being nasty to
each other. Your partner says something bad, you say bad things
back. Two people who love each other and really care for each
other, but they just have a habit of using bad speech towards one
another.
It’s a habit which gets established by living with someone for
a long time and of course, sometimes we’re in a bad mood, we
say something bad to them, and they give bad back, and then we
dealing with addictions 🙔 151
give it worse back. It’s tit-for-tat. It gets worse and worse. And it
becomes a bad habit.
So how do we overcome this bad habit, this addiction to bad
speech? When your partner is not with you and you’re resting and
peaceful, you say to yourself: ‘When my partner says something
bad to me, I will say something nice back.’ In your own words,
instruct your mind and then forget about it. You don’t need to be
tense, walking on eggshells with your partner. You’ll be amazed
how it works.
When your partner says something really uncalled for, you’re
about to follow the old habit of saying bad things back, but the
‘program mindfulness’ will come in and you will become aware
that there’s another possibility: to say something nice. You break
the habit. So if your partner says: ‘You’re late again,’ you can say:
‘Yes, but I was missing you all the time, and I was just looking
forward to this moment…’ That breaks the bad habit of tit-for-tat.
You can change the way you talk to one another.
If there’s something not so pleasant to say to your partner,
don’t talk to them when they’ve just come home from work, all
tired and stressed. They’ve just had enough already. Take them
out to dinner at their favourite restaurant, and at the last course
you can tell your partner anything. They’ll have been so softened
up that whatever is said will actually go in—they’ll listen.
Addiction to fault-finding
We’ve also got bad habits of thought. That’s actually the core of
all addictions. One of the worst habits or addictions is having
152 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
Get off that addiction to finding fault, and much of the de-
pression and anger will disappear in this world.
dealing with addictions 🙔 153
When I first came to Australia, another monk was the head monk
for the first 10 years. When he left, I became the boss. We tend to
be a bit of a control freak when we first start as a boss. 😁
About six months after taking over the job, I was walking
through the grounds of our monastery and found that some
stupid careless monk had left a hammer out in the grounds, and
it was getting rusty!
And you know that everything we have here at Bodhinyana
Monastery is from your generosity, your donations. That’s how
we live. And some senseless monk thought that this was just a
stupid old hammer and left it out in the bush to get rusty. He
wasn’t caring for your donations! If you found out that we didn’t
look after what you gave us, you’d be rightfully upset. Why give
charity if it’s not respected?
So I thought this was a very good opportunity to give a talk to
all my monks. I had a special meeting in the hall. This time there
was not one joke. This was serious. ☹ I blasted them: ‘Look, we
live on charity, and you’ve got to respect charity. Who knows who
gave this hammer—it might have been somebody on a pension,
somebody who saved up for that because they like the monks,
they like having a monastery, they love Buddhism, and they
wanted to help out. And now somebody has left this hammer out
in the bush to get rusty! That is not on. You can’t do that! That’s
improper!’
I was really fierce. After about 45 minutes of that, all of the
monks were sitting up straight, not one of them was sleepy. After
154 🙒 opening up to kindfulness
I finished the talk, I was waiting. I waited for about three or four
minutes for the offender to put their hand up to confess. I would
have forgiven them. But not one monk put their hand up. No
one! And that was the worst part of the whole thing. I thought
maybe I’d gone a bit over the top, scaring them too much. But
as long as you confess and say you’ve done something wrong,
you’re forgiven.
I left that hall, so disappointed and sad that the monks didn’t
have enough guts to confess. But as I was walking out the hall,
I realised why they hadn’t confessed. Because it suddenly came
back to me who had left the hammer out there. It was me! And
I’d forgotten all about it. And it was only after I told all the monks
off that I remembered! 😅
That was one of the most embarrassing moments in my life! I
went back in the hall and said to the monks: “Could you all please
sit down? I’ve got an announcement to make. It was me.” Have
you ever done that? In public? It’s very embarrassing, but at least
I admitted it. And everyone laughed. That’s what happens when
you’re fault-finding.
Instead of seeing the faults in life, you see how beautiful this
world is. You don’t just see the lump of litter on the ground, you
see all the grass around it, which is beautiful. And you can actually
pick the litter up and put it in the bin instead of complaining
about it. The same with your partner in life. Your partner may
not be the best, but, quite frankly, they’re pretty good. And you—
you’re not the best, but you are pretty good. When you look at
yourself like that, you can have a happy life.
Be forgiving,
then you can be appreciative
rather than trying to find faults.
You’ve got to learn the limitations of what life gives you and
make some plans, but if it doesn’t work out as you’ve expected,
you’ve got to let go, make peace with it, and just adapt as things
happen.
I remember this little anecdote from when I was going to
Indonesia to give a talk. When I turned up at the airport, there
was a big sign saying: ‘Flight cancelled.’ Not delayed but totally
cancelled! I had lots of people expecting me to turn up and give
a talk. I didn’t have any money, a mobile phone or a credit card,
so I was stuck with nowhere to go, nowhere to fly, no one to take
me back to the monastery.
lower your expectations 🙔 159
If you don’t ask from this world something it can’t give you,
if you lower your expectations to the truth of life and don’t get
upset, embarrassed or angry, then you will have a far happier
life.
Generosity
and it was the first place where she felt safe in days; even the
atmosphere was reassuring, kind and soft. Feeling safe, she lay
down and fell fast asleep.
What a wonderful gift it was that we could give her just half
an hour of sleeping here. Forget about the snoring, forget about
the feet pointing at the Buddha. She was not doing it out of
disrespect—she just needed a place of safety where she could
catch up on sleep, and we could offer that to her.
Ideas like that show the whole meaning behind what we call
spirituality: kindness. The ability just to open up and allow things
to be even though they might be a little bit against the rules. But
what are the rules for anyway? What is their purpose? What does
that Buddha statue behind me stand for?
Virtue
When I bow,
I bow to what the Buddha represents for me.
Peace
The second bow is to peace. Peace comes from virtue as you don’t
need to argue with one another to get your own way. You can relax
and find some peace in this world by lowering your expectations
of what life is. You’re not fighting but making peace, being kind,
being gentle with yourself and with others. By lowering your
expectations, you’d see that what people think is perfection is
actually just not attainable, and little mistakes which you make
give you this beautiful humanity and lovability.
Beauty
You don’t have to be perfect, you don’t have to say the right things
in the right way, because that’s not the way nature is. You see
weeds growing in the grass, you see trees bending over, and they
all are making things surprisingly beautiful. You see clouds and
dust over the horizon in the evening, and those little imperfec-
tions are what causes the beautiful golds and reds and crimsons
that we see in the sky.
Emotional intelligence
one of the men came running towards me and threw his arms
around me and gave me a big hug.
I asked, “What are you doing this for?”
He said, “You’re upset, aren’t you?”
He saw my heartache straight away!
How on Earth did he know that? But these people were so
emotionally sensitive that they could look at us and know that
we were sad, upset, or angry. I was just amazed that though
they weren’t intellectually able to go to university, they had huge
amounts of emotional intelligence. They were so warm, so sen-
sitive, and so nice to be around. They were wiser than me in so
many areas.
With this amazing experience, I realised there’s more to life
than just studying. Peace is an emotion; it’s a feeling that you
can’t write down in a book or analyse, but you can know it in your
heart.
An old simile is: when you put your hand right in front of your
face, it’s so big. Just like when I’m obsessed with a problem, it
stays right in front of my face, I can’t see anything else but the
problem—and it’s huge. When you’re peaceful, it goes out to
where it belongs, at the end of your arm. The hand hasn’t di-
minished in size, the problem is exactly the same, but now with
perspective it’s not such a big deal anymore. You’ve found some
peace in your life. And peace is not what people tell you or force
you to do. Peace is what happens when you relax, let things be,
and have some kindness.
With perspective,
a small problem remains small and
you can be at peace.
The pyramids
I got to the top, it was obvious that this place was a place of spiri-
tuality. Because the top of the pyramid was above the tree line,
and for the first time in weeks I could see the horizon in all di-
rections—nothing was between me and infinity! This incredible
emptiness and space embraced everything, and it was peace.
Sometimes we disturb peace by giving it a name, by trying to
put it in a bottle and make it into a dogma, or by writing it in a
book and fighting over who has the right book. But spirituality
is something else.
Emptiness is peace.
Space
Wisdom
Spirituality
Real spirituality is
where we can find some common ground,
respect, and peace.
hances what you feel inside your heart: ethics, trust, goodness,
forgiveness, inclusion, and love. It’s wonderful.
That’s one of the reasons why when a person says: “I am better
than you,” it means that person is too stuck on the spiritual path
rather than following the path to find the truth and feeling what
the path really means, and then having trust and courage to
follow the heart rather than the dogma.