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And first of all, just how I feel this evening. I thank you very much for you giving me the privilege to give a talk on the Dhamma again this evening. As some of the way I've been trained and brainwashed if you like over these last years, there's always a look at things like teaching Dhamma as a great privilege. It's my honour to teach you and I say that just with sincerity.
There are just all the monks which I have known in this monastery, all the nuns which I have known and that includes the samanairis, and the samanairis and the gala, because a whole lot of you, it's very inspired by each one of you. Honestly, you may not think you're inspirational but the very fact that you've given up so much, abandoned so much to be able to come and practice here is something which I can draw energy from.
It's a weird thing but not this evening, this evening I feel very energised but sometimes you go and give a talk and sometimes you're tired, sometimes you're given a talk so often what I'm going to talk about next. And a lot of times you think, let's just call it off, but a lot of times it's the talk is what you inspire from me. I've often said this, though when the quality of the listeners is high, then the talk can be quite deep. It's like what you deserve and when I do give a talk, it's nothing to do with me.
I try and sort of key into you as best I possibly can. Try and understand and see what you need and then give a talk from there. It's like how I feel sitting here is I don't give a talk. I just basically having a nice conversation with you about the dhamma, about beautiful things which we have in this path of Buddhism. It's many years I've been teaching now.
I should have asked first of all, can you all hear me in the back? Thank you. I should have said that first of all, sorry. But just all those years you've been teaching the dhamma and it's amazing to see just what happens. You don't just judge it by how many people have got jaunas and how deep those jaunas are and how many enlightened beings.
And how many monasteries we build and how many dhamma teachings we've given and how strong this Buddhism is in Australia. All those sorts of qualities, they're really important but there's something which is even more important than that. It's just the fact that there's progress happening. There's a deepening of our understanding about why the Buddha left that home life.
It just went out into the jungles, into the mountains, into the wilderness places. And you know he knew he'd get enough food from somewhere but it was still very dangerous. I'm sure there'd be many monks who became the stream winners of 40 and 90 and no one ever knew about because they died on the way. But nevertheless it was all a thing which was worth doing. The act of renunciation, the act of letting go and just to see what would happen.
And that's one of the things which you know I often recall when I'm on my own. I do am on my own sometimes. When I'm on my own in my cave especially just walking on the meditation path and just reflecting just on the beauty of monastic life and the fact that you can let go so much. And it's not letting go just to measure how much you don't have the less you have the more enlightened you are.
But it's a whole idea of renunciation because we live together we can support one another. And but nevertheless we don't need so much ourselves. We don't need to feel afraid. That's one of the marvelous things about this monastic life. I'm not quite sure how it's worked over all these years. But we seem to have a lot of support. Not too much.
You know we still haven't got our own personal air condition meditation cushions. I often thought about that and retreats actually designing a high-tech meditation cushion.
So you can have your own little remote controls. You press one button and it inflates more. You know to lift up your back side. You can another button and your left leg goes up a bit. And if you really sort of saw you can press it and you get like this automatic massage.
Sometimes I've seen those. You know sometimes I travel business class and sometimes you have those buttons on those. And I'm sure you'd know. Okay I admit that I confess I press those buttons just to see what they would do. Might be playful. But anyhow you can also have buttons which actually increase the temperature if your butt is cold.
But the most amazing thing I thought you can have another button which makes you a cappuccino or a cup of tea with tin kiri. So in face you've got sloth and torpor. That's an excellent antidote to sloth and torpor. You press the button you don't have to get up. You press the button you get a nice cappuccino. Would that be a good idea? But anyway just you know all those kind of things is still a very kind and easy monastery.
And I think I like that idea because you feel welcome. You feel safe and you can feel
that in this monastery or damasaur or any other monasteries which we support. People can find the little place where they feel comfortable, welcome, good friends. But also that balance between that friendship and working together and that's solitude. And of course you know in life we have to find that balance between the two of those in all types of life.
Unfortunately in the way of the world it's very hard to find solitude and especially you start having a family and you've got all these duties and work and stuff. But the idea here where you can find time for yourself or for your non-self just to develop sort of the interest in your spirituality understanding about life, understanding about your body,
understanding about your mind. That's very very very important.
And as you all know I love that idea of understanding your own body. So a lot of times that's one of the reasons why somebody asked me today why is that you do this meditation on the body first of all when I do this guided meditation. And the reason is
no because it's great to be able to understand your body. And I don't mean just in a theoretical sense but to be able to feel it but to know it. Especially your body.
I'm pretty sure that yeah the bodies are pretty much similar but everyone's body will have differences to them. And because of that when you get to understand your body through this basic practice of mindfulness and kindness. And I can't emphasize the amount of important support and the kindness with the mindfulness. That keeps the mindfulness on track. It like empowers a mindfulness.
mindfulness is like you know a camera but the mindfulness empowers it. Makes it very clear and then your wisdom can direct it to where you need to investigate. But often you don't need too much wisdom to be able to direct your mind. Often just the mind gets pulled. Your mindfulness gets pulled into certain areas of your life. Especially those
creating trouble in your life.
But please don't just focus on the troublesome part. That's one thing with that story of the the two bad bricks was so important. And from my own practice. And to see that there was some other incredibly beautiful things going on. You know in this monastery in my life and this in your life in this meditation practice. And sometimes just focusing on the thoughts. I come on just leave those alone and all those stories about the twisted trees in the forest.
The bent ones the most beautiful ones. You don't have to be outside perfect. Just be aware and be kind. Keep it simple. And then you find that good health comes. And it's kind of fantastic to be able to look at your own body. Understand it. And then be able to work with it too often in our life. We work against things. And that working against things. It's almost like some negativity there. You're working against your own body. Working against other people. Upset.
You working against temperatures which you don't like. It gets very hard. It gets very cold. Say in here. You're right next to the air conditioner. But you've got less range retreats and the one sitting next to you. So you just have to enjoy some cold. I can't. In those days in Thailand. Sometimes it was just not just hot but it was just like stuffy hot. And just the humidity was really high and you're always sort of sweating.
And that attracted the mosquitoes. It was very unpleasant up there. And I still recall that time when I went down to Bangkok to do some visas. It's almost I think that's one of the reasons why I volunteered to be the visa monk for a lot of times. Doing everyone's visa for them. Because you go down to Bangkok and you can see in the air conditioned room at three o'clock in the morning.
You think that's a stupid time to meditate. But it was empty at that time. And because there was air conditioned it was really cool. You could meditate. And there was one of the main reasons for sloth and torpor. Which was just the atmosphere. It was humid. It was hot. And I was not used to that. And just be able to go into cool place. Oh there was so beautiful. You get up there into a couple of hours sitting meditation in the early morning.
And it just made your whole day just energized, inspired. And so that's one of the reasons just why I like to do the visas for people in those days. I'm sorry but doing the visas here you don't get extra air conditioning. You go into town if you need to. Everything's done on on internet now so you don't get those little benefits. But nevertheless just that would just made such a big difference to the meditation. And also gave me that wisdom, the insight.
It wasn't there was something wrong with me that I got very sleepy in the morning.
This was either meditating me on a heart. Of course there's no air content there. Or meditating in the hall in the early morning. There was no air conditioner there. And so it was just hot. And I'd always get sleepy. But you go and find out that you adjust the temperature. And you got some really nice meditation. Some good stuff.
And so that's one of the reasons why. I'm trying my very best to encourage you to be comfortable. To be able to sleep enough. Have nice enough cushions or whatever. And cool enough. I know we're still trying to get more air conditioners for some of you. It's impossible sometimes to get the electric power to you. But we can actually use the sunlight. And of course the time you need things like air conditioners is in the hot weather when there's plenty of sunlight. So it can be done.
And if it's the case it's going to improve your meditation. Like it did mine. Great. I'm into that. Simply because I know the personal benefits. And know that if you can, it's not for you so you can sleep well at night. So you can get up in the morning and turn air con on or whatever or nighttime or mid afternoon. And find a lovely temperature so you can cross your legs and the body feels comfortably enough.
You can let it go. That's what you learn about your meditation. Yes sometimes you've got some other injuries. But it's amazing just all those years when you know I've been
practicing. Sometimes I imagine this in not a mile on the weekend. Sometimes I have fallen off lattice. I did come off my motorbike two or three times. That's not when I was a monk. That was when I was a layperson. And now icy roads.
Sometimes you can see the ice and the very bendy roads. I'm very lucky. I didn't really do more damage to my body or playing sort of sports as a young man. So many times you injured your body. But now I can look at that body and I can feel just some of the places which were injured. But then I can just relax them all. I say relax them. It's a very hard thing to describe. But I just make sure that I don't put any extra pressure on them.
You don't stretch them. You don't squash them. You don't ask them for anything. You just give them this beautiful kindness. And that beautiful kindness which has been practicing for so many years relaxes everything. And there's so many times that you've had sort of injuries. Or you've, you know, I remember I think it's still in the library maybe. In the library behind here there's a photograph which someone took of me just after I fell off.
The ladder building the ablution block here. And since that time there's been lots of backfill. To actually to make, you know, the front corner of that building. It doesn't look as high as it used to because that corner has been increased in height. Or rather the floor has been increased in height. Remember falling off that. And just instead of landing, you know, as comfortably as I could and just getting your legs caught into the the metal of the ladder.
And I'm really lucky not to have broken my legs. And just not being able to sleep at night because you're in great pain. And then in the morning just going into town just to get an extra fantasy I was okay. Nothing was broken. Very, very, very, very lucky. It's that hurt like hell. But nevertheless you found out how to use your meditation not to worry but actually to be with your body. Understand it how it works.
And that gave me such beautiful confidence in this meditation. Especially for physical injuries and things like that. Indigestion. I told you what I used to do with that and there was a brilliance. Just how you could look at any part of your body which was sickly or ill. And you'd calm it all down. And that word for calming it down. Now it was called samata. It's just a problem there and you calmed it, solved it so it wasn't a problem anymore. And that was one of the the understandings that I had of that word.
And so it also informed me of how I do that with my own mental well-being and our emotional peace. Which was you know the deep meditations and how beautiful they were. So when you learn how to use the same process for calming your body and then for calming your mind. It gave me this enormous power to live monastic life without getting so sick.
I do even remember doing stupid things like telling the monks which I lived with in the first couple of years there. I said I vowed I'm not going to get sick for 12 months
because everyone else was getting sick. I did that out of arrogance. But amazingly it worked. I was one of the healthiest monks there in those early years when everyone else was getting diarrhea and even more worse stuff.
I think it was only after a year or two that I lost it and just had scrubtifers. But nevertheless you understand how that affects the body and how you can find an escape you know from that painful and debilitating body stuff. When you really think about it you have these amazing opportunities to be here to meditate and then sometimes the body sickness gets in the way. That's why I always recognize that and the best of your possible abilities to find ways to overcome the sicknesses.
And once you've overcome those sicknesses have confidence that this process actually works and does keep you alive and does keep you free of so many sort of problems. And once you do that with your body just learn how to relax it. It kind of vanishes. It's like the body like you can go to sleep at night. How do you go to sleep at night? You need to relax your body to the max and then you have a nice night's sleep.
You also need to feel safe where you stay so you don't feel that there's any problem that someone's going to come in or anybody is going to disturb you. And when you have that safety and that solitude the two of them are quite hard to find together because when you're with somebody else sometimes you feel they can protect you sometimes but nevertheless when you're just alone.
Sometimes safety, fatter kind of disappears but nevertheless I still remember so many times meditating in the jungles. I don't know why it was. I had this almost natural sense of safety and confidence you know keeping precepts now being a monk and sometimes you'd sit in your mosquito net umbrella in a jungle and you'd do us first of all at night time. You know it's the start of up or there's a full moon like there's one coming tomorrow I think a full moon isn't it?
And when a full moon is out you can see all the animals and I would lay down in the umbrella and just you know not close my eyes yet but watch all the snakes you know just glide past. They didn't bother me at all and I never felt afraid which was weird because many of those snakes were obviously well I didn't know how deadly they were but I was still told that story when I first went to Thailand there was 100 species of snake in Thailand 99 of venomous which means if they bite you
you get the venom and you're very very sick and the 100th species of snake has no venom it just strangles you to death so there wasn't very reassuring for me but nevertheless you saw those snakes and you weren't afraid at all it's weird sometimes people are afraid of negativity when it comes into your mind but instead of being afraid just like a snake which has venom in it it
just comes into your vision and it glides out again you don't hold it you don't keep it you don't own it as I said to somebody today all those uh defilements which people worry about they come in and they go away almost immediately when you realize you don't own these things which means you don't need to do anything it's not yours it's not your business sometimes I like that word and remind myself of it
when I'm meditating none of my business none of my business none of my business that's where that idea of being a visitor in the monastery on a Monday morning which I still remember and I try to do as best I possibly can because when you have visitor rather than the head mark you don't have any responsibility we do have responsibility but responsibility for different things responsibility for being a monk for being a meditator for being peaceful for being virtuous for letting go of stuff that's my main responsibility
not for solving other problems by making decisions or sending emails by finding another way to solve problems and that means that you're not responsible anymore you let go you disappear you vanish and the idea of being responsible you can see just how that creates problems you got to be responsible sometimes but not all the time and each one of you have that opportunity which is a beautiful opportunity you know you're a nun
you are as I say over in many parts of southeast Asia you are a renunciant so what are you announcing you have this choice you decide not to take the choice I'm renouncing I'm not going to do anything I'm going to sit here and just allow everything to calm down and become peaceful and then see what happens the nice part about that is when you give yourself a break from having to make decisions and control and guide yourself
when you give yourself a break from that and a silent that's where the best insights come from it's kind of weird the more I think about it the more I think in just well-worn paths which haven't worked before and I think that they're going to work this time it is ridiculous instead you make your mind very calm and peaceful and still and solutions just come up by themselves and they're really good ones things you haven't done before
but they work and I love that idea of like innovation you know with your insight practice and the innovation means you see things from a different angle you see things in a different way you understand more and it's not what you do that's the other beautiful thing about this it's almost like an intuition you don't force it you don't think about it's not a logical process just the answer just comes up by itself and it's weird how that works but it does work
and it's been many good examples of that and I did see when I was over in one of the flights somewhere that someone was there was a movie made about this guy I heard about him before this mathematician forget what his name was but he got all these solutions just appear to him in his mind and eventually that they were just so original and they were so correct that he was invited to the other place I learned that when last time
I went to UK you're not supposed to say if you're from Cambridge you're not supposed to mention the word oh X F O R D it's called the other place okay that's just a bit of humor but that's what I was told anyway when I was in Oxford and because that Nuns and Monastery is there and then when I said I studied at Cambridge they said oh you're not supposed to say that word in Oxford called it the other place so now I'm getting my own back calling Oxford the other place
but anyway went over there and this was brilliant where did all this stuff come from all this really amazing true mathematical formula but nevertheless this is how insight works
sometimes when you're really very still and you've you know there's been a problem which has been there in your mind previously and then you totally forget it in your still
these amazing new answers just come up new solutions ways of doing things you never expected to be able to to see
and that's what this patterns of insight is where problems are sold the difficulty the business is centered so this problem is not there anymore and this is actually part of the practice of our meditation how it actually works and so that whe our meditation how it actually works and so that when we can have a place where we can allow this to happen even like a body is nice and comfortable and what does it do it is vanishes and disappears and sometimes I love that
because it gives whenever it starts to disappear and the body gets comfortable you get joy coming up this is happiness and and he can he can tell sometimes when I've had a good meditation when I come to the tea time I come to breakfast and I'm silly you got too much joy and happiness coming up and does that energy hope you can see that because if you want to ask me any privilege or something that's the best time to ask I usually say yes and you can hopefully see that joy and happiness because that's an important part of being a monk
it means that joy and happiness is obviously great for your health and you just can't get angry at anybody well to me just getting angry is the most stupid thing to do because if you get angry at somebody it doesn't sort of stop them and sometimes when I see somebody doing some really crazy stupid things I only remember yeah I did that many times so if I get angry and criticize them or just criticizing me in my past it doesn't make sense to me so instead when people just act in a really weird way
I caught it weird way rather than a wrong way and then I just laughter it's the best you can sometimes reminisce when I did stupid things like that and when what some of the stupid things I did in the past crikey honestly I'm just trying to figure some stupid thing I did in Thailand when I was young as a monk okay I'll just leave that alone because it's hard to think of anything I'll just let too much of that stuff go
but nevertheless when you see someone else doing something stupid or selfish or mean I kind of remember all the times which I did that you know one of the stories is not a mean thing which I did but I told this to somebody a few days ago and it's a very beautiful example of you know when we do our chanting I think I remember this because when I went over to the Nance Monastery you know your chanting was actually beautiful in Damasala and it reminded me of this monk
who I grew up with a good friend his name was Ananda Atenananda and his background was really quite incredible you know he was in street gangs in Buffalo New York and he said to me and I know he was a monk at the time and only to doubt him they would play for keeps he said against the other gangs using not ordinary bike chains but motorbike chains and just hitting others with those having fights with those
that was just really really bad stuff and then
when he got to the age he volunteered to join the US Marines he wasn't drafted he just volunteered why he said to get tougher and he was sent to Vietnam and it was very fortunate that he got shot in the head in the back of the head he was laughing at one of his fellow soldiers wounds he got shot in the foot that was called a million dollar wound and he got a two million dollar wound by being shot in the back of his head and he always had this depression in the back of his head like a concave area
and he was saying that you know that for the first the first weeks in his recovery he was told in the hospital that he would be blind because they had to remove a large part of the brain which was affected by the bullet wound and that part of the brain was the part which dealt with sight and so they told him straight up said you're a marine you're a tough guy you're not going to be able to see remember him talking to me just imagine that happened to you
he made this resolution he told me about it became a good friend i'll say why in a moment he said i thought it wasn't worth living if i couldn't see he said that soon as i get these bandages off and have a some kind of freedom i will kill myself and then what happened when the bandages were taken off he was surprised and you could actually see it was only months later after he left the army
having a thousand dollars a month pension it was in 1969 or something or spose six yeah probably about then and there's a lot of money and a thousand dollars a month and i think he just did whatever he wanted so he's playing baseball one day in one of the parks in new york city and you know he went to catch the ball and the ball vanished it has disappeared from space and then a second or two later reappeared
and he realized what a black spot was so not black spot a blind spot was you don't know you have blind spots that's why they call blind spots he just worked it out balls don't just suddenly go out of the universe and reappear again later on it is your brain
or your mind whichever you call it if there is a spot missing they make up what's supposed to be there they infer what's supposed to be there they just carry on the lines and join them up
in what they think should be there it's a wonderful experience on how delusion works
and anyhow eventually became a muck and he was one of the toughest guys in the monastery at that time and he will stand up to anybody but then we were doing a training to do this chanting which we all do the house chants and in Thailand sometimes we do this invitation for heavenly beings to come and listen to the chanting
and that is always done in forest monasteries in a monotone
but he decided to do it in a musical way which is how all other Buddhist monasteries in Thailand do it perita one amita and samita but something like that only much more beautiful and as soon as he finished all the other monks in that monastery what banana chart they'll look to him and said that's wrong he shouldn't do it that way never do that way again and you could see he was so crestfallen afterwards
he was just put so much energy and effort into that and no one uh no one appreciated it at all I had just ordained as a monk maybe one or two months but then I just tapped him on the shoulder when we were just kind of alone and I said if I was a diver I would have come and I had a friend for life from that time he really was a friend for life he would do anything for me a little bit of kindness I only did that because I thought the other monks were being too cruel on him and he really appreciated that and I remember that as something I'd rather have a friend in a monastery than people who hated me or disliked me
I did understand the power of kindness a power friendship the power of just doing something which is very necessary for him of course later on in his life you know he did disrobe but we actually think and it's probably a good reason a few months or year or something after disrobing you know he was diagnosed with a brain cancer just because of the the injury and the surgery taking out part of the brain
they thought you know probably we'll get a cancer though eventually and so he died but nevertheless just I remember just you know just how friendly he could be especially to me I couldn't do anything wrong after that so I always remember that's really important in dhammasala in bodhinyana whatever monastery you're in please make those friendships as much as you possibly can treat each other with kindness and that sort of inspires you
inspires you so much that they even just remembering that story and go back to your room and you remember just that small act of kindness how much it meant to him and how much it meant to me and that's an inspiration for you to start your own meditation practice you know to actually to remember that and why do we always think it should be done this way and not that way and when you're meditating for goodness sake
don't always do it the same way just don't even do it at all and let it happen that's always what I feel needs to be done take away all the barriers all the doing or the negativity or in the ideas which many people have they can't do it or they don't deserve it or this is not the right way maybe I should do it the other way whichever way there's only one way to meditate and that's just to let go and call it all sorts of different names
all sorts of different you know things you think you're doing but all you're really doing is renouncing the sense of self the sense of control the sense of ownership it is allowing the mind to become still just allowing it which is the most important you know we always know think we should do the meditation but you never do you know you may think you're doing something but eventually you get sort of kind of focused you get sort of like peaceful and then the whole body disappears you got nothing to do nothing to do just to be peaceful
sit there and enjoy this moment and when the happiness starts to come up that's an important part of the part of meditation enjoy the happiness because when that starts to come up you know you can indulge in it and let's say that you know carefully you know that prosciatica suta where you said anyone who indulges in the pressures of the mind they only get the four genres and you also get the enlightenment as well
stream meeting once returning non-returning and falling night when that's what happens so that's one of the reasons when joy starts to come up that gives you inspiration confidence it does actually work remember the first times i was starting to do that and starting reading the sutas the description of these things you know kind of it's it's gobsmacking and the gobsmacking means it's kind of surprising even though
you know you shouldn't really doubt what the Buddha said but nevertheless when you do it and you find these things actually happening but it's gracious this is real and when it starts to happen you know you realize the power of these teachings this is not just a joke these things are not just a way of living 2,500 years ago which is way past now there's much better ways to meditate just take some sono sillabin whatever it's called
some drug or substance and that's going to be much quicker than just sitting on your bum and just making yourself peaceful and now the way the Buddha thought was gorgeous and you find this joy coming up and the joy gives you that it's inspiration it's real and every time you get into a nice deep meditation afterwards you know please also just wait for a few moments and just think what's that done to your body
it's amazing just how it energizes the body and the most deepest of levels how it feels much healthier how many sort of diseases and stuff which should have really taken off
just gets disappear you know I remember that story which Ajahn Chah told me about you know I did talk with him a lot about how we overcame his malaria fever all monks had malaria fever in those days
and because you're living out in the jungles all the time and mosquitoes was biting you and the the power scientists transferred from animals to humans and the monks especially I remember him saying that he was meditating in the kind of attack of the malaria fever so the fever got very very strong really hot and he just used wonderful perception he perceived that he was like in the middle of this forest fire and the trees all around him were just burning exploding in flames
and this was just his perception way of looking at it similar to this and the body was the forest it was burning so hot the fever was but he was standing or sitting in the center of everything the cool spot like the eye of a storm he said in that middle of that fever there was he could know there was heat all around him but it never burned him and he stayed there until the fire got hotter and hotter and hotter and hotter
but it was it was he could tolerate it easily because it wasn't hurting he was in the very center of it if he moved he would burn him but in the center it was cool and so you can let it get hotter and hotter and hotter until it exploded that's what he said and then once it exploded he was so cool and that was the last time he ever had the malaria fever and remember him saying that and just how inspiring that was
and can that actually work for others and of course yes it can so that this is one of the reasons why you get to know your body you get to know how to interact you know with the diseases and with the health of the body and how you can overcome almost anything you know with sicknesses and diseases of course it takes a long time you know to understand some of the things which you've seen and some of the things which you've studied
but i was mentioning to again quite a few people about that time one of my interests was psychic research and hypnotism brainwashing if you like but this was some examples you saw and over you know with Bernard Carr he was one of those of the psychic research society and the doctor leading it was called Dr. Cornell Tony Cornell and i remember to do this experiment hypnotizing somebody
and on hypnotizing them and with the had a piece of wood with a four inch nail on the end and hypnotized them to think that this nail was red hot and of course if you're hypnotizing believe it is and he touched him on the arm and he screamed in pain the student under hypnosis and we all thought that that was interesting because the needle or the other nail was at room temperature
but what you never expected to see was a blister come up on his arm where the nail had touched him and that was showing me the power of the mind over the body and so of course you realized why can't we use that instead of creating burns overcoming burns letting tumors vanish letting diseases like a malaria disappear once and for all can they not be done i know that's controversial
we use that sometimes when you're a forest mark and you go a long way now from any doctor or any way of just being looked after physically but sometimes you can do that and it gives me that confidence you know being in a forest being alone so sometimes if you trip over you fall off a ladder but you do all sorts of amazing things stupid things sometimes but sometimes there is something else you can do
understanding the mind is a forerunner of all things it's powerful and see what can you can do okay that might sound a bit miraculous but you see these things happening
and they're weird and fantastic for those of you again i have to extend the repertoire because another story that when i was you know maybe five years as a monk in northeast Thailand and i did want to do some service for the others and so what i decided to do
I read in a newspaper another article in a magazine that sometimes you can use things like buffalo poo or what a buffalo poo which was everywhere and you can use it to generate methane and so i asked i think adjan passano at the time can i build one of these because we needed a new toilet and it was going to be a combination between human poo and water buffalo poo to actually to make a methane generator
and he said why not and by the time we can actually give back to the village so i built one just in both in the monastery in the back of the kitchen and it worked generated methane so all the monks could have a nice hot drink when they came back from arms round i was very popular because of that but we didn't you know generate that much methane and i realized afterwards this because all those data which i had researched on
that was for water buffalo and other parts of Thailand and the water buffalo even in uh ubon province they were very thin the soil was just so undernourished that even the grass which they ate and all the twig all the leftovers from the the rice patties there wasn't that nutritious at all we still got enough there and i remember just the builder at what banana chart pore b his name was
because he was building the the methane generator for me you know he used to have good chats and he was saying yeah i never but i thought you were crazy actually but how can you get sort of a gas you know from feces and but i saw and it worked and that's when he told me about the charm they had for snake bite he said just like the snake bite charm
he said in the old days they used to have all these anti-venoms if one of the men got bitten by a snake in the paddy fields he said we threw all those anti-venoms away he said we've got this chance this one of the villagers learned and it works he said every time and these villages aren't stupid you know that's their life at stake and of course it was about one year after i left uh what banana chart there was Singaporean monk who was staying there who got bitten by a snake
and the story was he went into the library there was another monk sitting in that library and the Singaporean monk said can i have the snake book please like a book of all the snakes in that part of Thailand and he looked at the snake book turn a few
pages and then he exclaimed oh my goodness that was the one which just bit me it was deadly and the other monk in the library looked at that and he looked at this Singaporean monk's leg you could see the two puncture wounds and that part of the leg was swirling up going all red and so if that happens it's part of the venirals you put everything down you run into the the viddies to get help so the i'm not sure how good this monk was at running
but he ran as fast as he could and he got the snake doctor and the Singaporean man i wasn't there at the time but i've asked this to the monks who were there and saw it so many times this Singaporean you know he was just really sort of extremely agitated when he saw the doctor they brought from the village was not like the doctors they have in Singapore
but was this almost like a witch doctor and all he did was he started chanting chewing some roots and spitting it on this Singaporean monk's leg spitting and chanting and spitting and chanting and if that was you how would you react the Singaporean monk turned around and said can i please have a proper doctor but while they were all watching just the sweating went down the redness vanished and even the two puncture wounds closed up
it was like something which was miraculous but it happened it was there it worked and that's one of the reasons why i don't know how it works but there's some things in this world as a scientist you see or you have irrefutable proof you know it's true it's one of the reasons why you know when we do this meditation it opens up a huge area of interesting stuff
and i've always been fascinated with this ever since that's why i joined the astronomical society theoretical physics quantum physics anything weird i was into because i was fascinated with this part of this world which i didn't know and i wanted to find out about and as i did that in much of this you actually had confirmed but also it gave me this idea that this mind is a huge area of benevolent power
which we should really look at more and more and more and really get to know which is one of the reasons why you get encouraged when you get into this deep meditation
you actually feel them and feel the power which they give to your mind and to your body of course to be able to get into those states takes a lot of letting go a lot of renunciation a lot of just not wanting anything to allow all those
hindrances to developing the mind to vanish and disappear and eventually you get to this point where you feel there's no there is no obstacles to you anymore the mind is kind of free and as freedoms of the mind this is actually the remocus this is what the Buddha called the jhanas that the where the mind is just not held back anymore and those are the sorts of things which kind of you know don't forget this is part of monastic life
you're not just building hearts please thank you for doing that you're announcing a lot or writing articles or just arranging the donuts i'm not sure what else you know we do but one of the main reasons we're here is actually to cultivate the mind to free the mind and realize just how powerful this sixth sense can can actually be and cultivating it to make it a great benefit for others
even like an adjunct charter see what he could do it's brilliant stuff i know that at a jhanas funeral because you know he he died in january and he had his remembrance service on january the sixteenth and then that that occasion they had a few monks and one of the leading lace supporters in front of the tv cameras because you know this was an important event in tailand and the king of tailand was there and they asked all these monks you know on camera
live to wear did you see a jan char doing any amazing psychic phenomena and all the monks there kept quiet and only one of the laypeople there said yes and everyone was really interested and he said you know i saw him teaching dhamma it's very good point but sometimes you saw him doing other stuff as well which not really supposed to be able to do and some of that stuff you know you see it enough times you realize
wow there's something really going on here and that kind of that sort of stuff interested me you know from the old days the power of the mind and that interest was something which you also realized if you wanted it it would never happen you try for it and you block it it just happens as a natural result of when your mind gets very peaceful and very still when it gets peaceful and still for long periods of time
you not only bliss out but you get incredible insights and little things like doing stuff like reading minds and stuff and that can happen and obviously you've got to be very careful the only time you really a lot of times you decide not to practice that simply because it's dangerous but at least you know it works and that becomes inspirational you get the confidence the water buddha said was not some sort of mythology was actually real that's one of the reasons
why we I do do things like chanting and holding water and stuff it's not in the water but it's in just not even in the words of the chant it's what you put underneath that chant what propels it that gives it the energy and the power and too many times that's worked you can't refuse to say it doesn't work and sometimes that makes your life kind of interesting you're investigating you're experimenting
you're finding out the nature of this not just this world I know many people love to actually to go to different places in this world and see Niagara Falls see the Grand Canyon but how many of you like to see in the Jhanas see just the the alupa let us see just how this mind can be so empowered we'd like to see that guided tours so after a while you've got to be careful not to want
because I just blocks it all we need to do is to keep on that practice making the mind more and more peaceful understanding the blockages understand what encourages that mind to get more and more peaceful what works for you how to sit in a quiet enough place and made that really important in your life you have the opportunities here so please don't waste them just enjoy the meditation and just go for who knows how deep you can go and just see what the Buddha saw anyway I think I've said enough
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