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For this evening's talk. I've just come back this afternoon from overseas
and there's an email waiting for me and somebody was asking a question, and
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
you've got their shoes. [laughter]
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
over there.
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,
it's not other people!
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
wasn't the village's fault, it wasn't the other dogs. It wasn't the forest
or the shade or the sun or the rock's fault. It was actually carrying
around the mange inside of itself. And that's an important thing to
remember that, it's not your wife's fault. It's not your husband's fault.
It's not the government's fault. It's not the economy's fault. It's not my
fault. Certainly it's not my fault. [laughter] And it's not your fault either. We take
this thing around with us. It's always our fault. It's a wonderful way of
looking at it, the mange is why we don't have a proper relationship to
things.
Sometimes in life you do have to deal with troublesome situations. Now
first of all, when you have a difficult situation, lets not say a
difficult person. A difficult situation in life. Sometimes you look at that
situation, it may be economic problems, it may be sort like an itchy
throat. It may be like your plane is delayed and cancelled. It's not,
that's not the problem. The problem is always what you do with that. How
you relate to that. How you make that work to your advantage.
So if I've got an itchy throat and start coughing like this, then people
have got much more sympathy for me and they don't ask so many questions
when I'm finished. So I actually turn it to my advantage so I can get to
bed earlier. If you have an economic problem and you know you haven't got
so much money, then you can become much more green in your life, be more
environmentally friendly. Because when you got poor you can't afford the
big things or you can't afford the car. And instead of getting a car
because you're too poor, you can get a bicycle which is not only good for the
environment but good for your health as well. So even in economic difficult
times you can turn it to your health advantage and other advantages as
well. There's so many things we can do. One thing I've often said here, I
told this in Colombo and people really were stunned by
it because they never heard this before. You've heard it many times before.
If you're in economic problems, what a wonderful advantage that is to
downsize. To get a smaller house or apartment or even better, a small
monk's kuti, a little hut. Because you'll find, number one, it's so
much easier to keep clean.
The smaller the house, the less room, the less housework. It's brilliant.
And also, the smaller your house, the less chance there is of any burglars
coming in. They'll take one look at your small house and they think, 'Wow
if that's the size of their house there's nothing in there.' Where do
burglars go? The big houses. Anyone's got a big house there must be big
things in there. So you have to have no problem with burglars and also
my most important things, when you have small houses, all the people in
those houses, because they're close together physically they soon come
close together emotionally. Big mansions cause so much loneliness in the
family. Husband in one room, wife in another room, son in their room,
daughter in another room and even the dog's got his own kennel in the back.
So why do we do such things? Big mansions actually separate people. Have
you ever noticed why sometimes the kids don't know how to get on with each
other or get on with their parents? When you're really stuck together in a
small place you have to get on together. I've just come back from Sri
Lanka. It's quite a big island, but there's so many people in that place.
They're all crammed together. So they have to get on with each other. Even
though it's actually crazy being driven along those roads. There's so many
traffic in there and tractors and goats and goodness knows what else goes
along the main roads, these are the main highways. But still, people,
because they're used to that, they're much more skillful drivers than sort
of here in Australia. At least those who are still alive are the more
skillful drivers. [laughter] They learn to get on together, they're so close together,
they have to. So there's no other alternative. So close proximity
towards each other actually is a good thing I think.
And sometimes our spread out suburbs, and we all know we don't know our neighbours.
I think it was actually Tim Costello once said that "more people know
the 'Neighbours' TV show than the neighbours