Name: 以梅塔解脫生命中的問題｜阿闍黎-婆羅門著 (Freeing Problems in Life with Metta | by Ajahn Brahm)
Uploaded: 2021-01-14T05:40:53.000Z
Duration: 55 min 41 s
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For this evening's talk. I've just come back this afternoon from overseas

過去進行式

and there's an email waiting for me and somebody was asking a question, and

未來簡單式

I'll make it a subject for this evening's talk. In Buddhism we talk a lot about

loving kindness and compassion, but how can we use loving kindness and

compassion, they said, for troubled people? And how come we can we put

boundaries around those troubled people? And it's a very good question

because even though Buddhism is regarded as a very compassionate religion

or path, it also has to be a wise path as well. There's a very old simile

in Buddhism, a bird always has two wings and one wing is compassion and the

other one is wisdom. If you only have one of those wings, a bird can never

fly. If it does take off it goes around in circles, never gets anywhere. So

we always have to balance our compassion with wisdom and this is the case

in point here. We may have some difficulty in life and that's actually part

of life, life is what is difficult. If life was really easy there wouldn't

be much point in taking rebirth as a human being. It's the tests, the

difficulties which we face on our journey between birth and death which

actually provide us with the wisdom and the experience to understand what

compassion truly is and even to develop our wisdom even deeper.

For example, our caretaker Yong [?] was wise enough to know

that it was still a bit warm in here and also compassionate enough to turn

up the fans at the same time. So there you go, there's an example of wisdom

and compassion. If he was just compassionate and thought, 'Oh, may all

beings be cool', that would not have worked. If he was only wise and he

knew how to turn on those fans, that would not have worked. But when you

have wisdom and compassion get together, the fans get turned on and

everybody gets cooled down. But I'm sure there are some people though who are now

too cold! And I already see a few people putting blankets around them. [laughter]

And so even being kind to one person is actually torturing somebody else. [laughs]

This is one of the most important parts of compassion. When we practise

compassion and kindness it should always be to all beings. It's all beings,

not just this person, not just that person, but to all beings. And

sometimes when we practise compassion we have to put every stakeholder into

the equation. So because of this, because it's to all beings, sometimes

that makes life very difficult. How can you actually be kind to all beings?

And I think the solution comes in just the way that question was asked. I

think I've got it right, I may have not remembered the email accurately.

They called actually, there's some people called like troubled people. But

really I never see that there's actually troubled people. There's always

like troubled relationships. So it's not a person who's trouble, because

actually when they're a long way away they're no trouble at all! That's why

there's the old joke, you should avoid, you've got to understand a person

and to be kind you must always walk, walk ten miles

in their shoes to really understand them. And they always joke that that's

a very good thing to do because after ten miles you're ten miles away and

But when person's a long way away, of course it doesn't matter how mean,

nasty they are, they're no trouble to you. The only trouble comes when

they're right in front of you or next to you or they're associating with

you. So a troubled person, there's no such thing as a troubled person.

There's always the way that some people relate to you or you relate to the

other person. It's always troubled relationships. And it's not just people.

Because with compassion, it's not just people, it's sometimes things.

Sometimes life is so-called troublesome. Too hot, too cold. Sometimes

trouble is economic problems, health problems, how things go wrong in life.

So it's not just people, it's just life is sometimes troublesome. Now with

people you can sometimes get away from them. That's why I've got a cave in

my monastery. Got two doors, I can hide in that cave and get away. But no

matter how deep your cave is you can never get away from life.

And also, you can never get away from one person. You can get away from

your wife and your husband, from your friends, from your enemies. The one

person you can never get away from in life obviously is you. No matter

where you go, you take yourself with you. Sometimes that's why people get

into alcohol and drugs, just to try to escape from themselves. But of course

it's only a temporary escape because after a while, you're back there with you

again. And that's why also sometimes people get so upset with themselves,

they can't stand themselves, they even commit suicide. But even then as a

Buddhist I know that if you go and commit suicide and commit suicide to

try and get away from yourself, you're still there afterwards. And now

you're a ghost. So you're still stuck with yourself.

There's one thing I will let you know in life. You can never escape from

you. So if you can't escape from you, what should you do if you know you're

troublesome to yourself? It's not you the problem is, it's your

relationship with yourself. It's not the economic problem, it's your

relationship to that. It's not like a troublesome baby, I think it's a baby

in there, or a cat [laughter] squeaking in the corner over there. It's not the baby

over there, it's our relationship to that noise. That's the only difficulty

So first of all, lets actually redefine the question. How can you employ

metta or put boundaries in troublesome relationships? And those

relationships are with other people, with life, or with yourself. And of

course once we redefine it there it becomes more easy to see it's not the

other person's problem. Because too often we think 'It's their fault'. When

everybody thinks it's somebody else's fault, that's why we always get

conflict in this world. Palestinians think it's the Israelis' fault.

Israelis think it's the Palestinians' fault. I don't know, the workers

think it's the bankers' fault, the bankers think it's the government's

fault. The government thinks, I don't know what the government thinks is at

fault.. oh, the opposition. The government thinks it's the opposition's fault. [laughter]

And it's very easy to think that other people are troublesome. But again,

There's one of Ajahn Chah's favourite stories and this actually comes

from an old story in the Buddhist commentary. Once there was a dog and the

dog had mange. And the dog's skin was so itchy, no matter if it scratched

it, the mange, the skin disease got worse. That's why sometimes in poor

countries you see dogs with no hair. So this mangy dog was just having such

a lot of suffering and so he decided to run away from the village and live

in the forest. So he went in the forest but still had the suffering there.

So he went actually under water in the pond but still his back itched. So

then he went under the shade of a tree, then out in the sun, then under a

rock. Wherever that dog went it was always suffering until it realised it