How To Be Positive

So this is my first talk here for about three months, but of course, there's not just ah...as they used to say not all appearance get old for monks...no beard no skiddel at all. I was at a monastery down at serpentine, where we're still teaching the other monks and the novices, the anakara and also the sisters from Dhammasara. I have been travelling a little bit at the very beginning of the rain retreat to Sydney for the conference of the psychologist in the end another conference in mental health in Singapore, in the middle doing something good for Australia with a big conference with all the leaders of Australia, trying to get some good spiritual vibe to the people who run our country.

But in all of these things, that one of the reason they invite say a monk to one of these things, is actually because of the positive attitude and the vibe which a monk gives, and I was contemplating at a talk which I gave recently, that in psychology and life, we always ask to have a positive attitude towards things, to what so ever happened whether it is an economic crash, or whether it's a death or a love one, or separation of a relationship. There are all sorts of ups and down in life, we all say that have positive attitude helps enormously , of course there are plenty of evidence, just what that does to sickness, and to tragedy in life, but, I want to focus on this evening is how to be positive, cause sometime it gets really frustrating when some people tell you to be positive and you are not!(chuckle!) and it made you feel even worse when you having a hard time, they say:" come on! be positive!" and you can't even do that right.

So, this evening talks is, "How to have a positive mind", and the result of that attitude change in life, and of course, you all know whats coming, and that positive all comes from training your mind, especially in slowing down is to positive energy. To understand that, there is a classic story. Some of you may have heard it before, but I usually tell it to more gets and squeeze different understanding from the same story. One of those times of life which gave an experience which change much of the way you look at things, and that was the experience of walking up the hill to Bodhiyana Monastery in Serpentine. Many of you have been down there, hopefully some of you will come on Sunday for our katina ceremony.

Well, we got that 26 years ago, and for about 9 years, I gone up and down, we were in the road to that monastery always in a car or some sort of vehicle, there was like one of those days we had sort of couple of days ago we had warm spring morning, coming back from some sort of appointment, and feeling into so positive so energize, and having plenty of time, I told the driver, drop me off of the foot of the hill, I am gonna walk up today. Not for exercise so much its just for enjoying the morning, I have plenty of time. So I started walking from the south west highway up Kingspree drive to the gate of Bodhiyana Monastery. As I started walking, I got very surprised, actually was a shocked, as I look around me I could not recognize where I was. That hill side looked totally different to what I've remembered seeing looking through the window of a car, it was totally different, I was seeing things which I never knew was there, and what I saw had more detail, more depth of colour, it was just basically more beautiful, and of course that surprised me, and not being in a rush, not being in a hurry, I just stood still, as I stood still the whole hill side changed again, it was like evolving, now as a monk you're not in any sort of psychotropic substances you don't take alcohol, although, during our rain retreat, somebody offer the monks some chocolate cake and fortunately before we ate it, one of the monk looked at the little writing on the cover and saying it had alcohol in it, fortunately we stop in time, because sometime you not sure when you get yourself some chocolate cake,sometime they put in alcohol for the taste and they cooked it and all the alcohol goes, it doesn't matter, but we didn't know whether it was put in before or afterwards, so we decided not to take it, and gave it to one of the visitor, and he was very happy to be a Guinea pig, and when he came back next week he said that was A Lot Of Alcohol! it didn't evaporated and we did a good job, we were very careful, otherwise you may have gone to our monastery just after lunch in a rain retreat and seeing all the monks singing and dancing and goodness knows what else, which would've not done very well our reputation, so you gotta be very careful, so we don't take such things, there were sort of sober mindful, alert, so

Here I was having an experience like sometime you have in life and things become really weird and they starts changing in front of your eyes. But what it happens,what I was seeing became, it had more detail, more information, that hill side, you started to see little flowers, start to see rocks, and the shape of the rocks, and the liking on the rocks, and just look at the tree barks and whole tree barks was just amazing beautiful, and what was also strange is that the colours. the colours of everything you saw started to grow more intense more rich, more deep more beautiful, and the whole things were exquisite, and of course when a monk had experiences like that, we don't just enjoy, we still contemplate afterwards, what the hack was going on? I decided to analysed it through science and it became quite clear to me, that when you see things, sight is a chemical reaction on the back of your eyes, on your retina, and what happen was most people is so when they see something they move on to another image almost immediately, so the image on the back of your eye doesn't have time to properly form, and the colours don't come out, it just maybe 10% of what is there, and the detail is all smeared, because the image does not have time.

When I walk, I was going slower, the image on the back of my eye, the light have more time so you can see a much more full picture with more detail, and the colour were deeper because I had more time to manifest it was just a simple physiology, the sight which was occurring, and of course when I stood absolutely still only than did my eyes have all the time it needed to form a full picture, and for the colours which out there all the time, to be fully represented in the image on the back of my eye for my mind to have time to explore it fully to appreciate it and to taste it 100%, and of course I realized a very good simile of why people don't have a positive attitude in life, why they don't understand life. Because too many people live life as if they're in a fast car looking through the window, always going on to the next thing and pretty quickly too.

So what we're experiencing now doesn't have a time, we can't feel it fully, we're about to feel, we get 5% we get 10% we move out to something else sight, taste, feeling, everything, we don't have time for it to fully form. But when we do go slower, when we do move more gently through life, when we get out of the fast cars of life and just go on bicycles, oh bicycles gonna be too damn fast get off the bike and walk, not even walk but walk slowly what happens is you find that your senses at last have time, and the mind has got the opportunity to explore whatever comes into your senses, you see things more fully, you get more information more detail. And the surprising things at first for me, now I understand this is part of this experience, that what you see, what you feel what you taste, what you know, becomes more and more beautiful, ordinary grass becomes this green that is alive vibrant and rich, its an intense green, but when you're going through the window of a car is pastel, simply because you haven't given it time.

When I had experiences like that of course I realized it does basically what happen when we slow down in meditation, you go into retreat you just take time out of life, now you learn to move more slowly through your day whenever you can, and you do have many opportunities. What happens is you feel more you get more information, what you see becomes very rich, is a positive psychology, because sometime that hill side might be just ah...not enough trees, not enough grass its just ausy bush, it should be like some garden or like some Japanese garden or one English garden or whatever...no, when you really slowdown and stop, you can see the beauty there.

Now imagine you could slow down and stop and see the beauty in some other things in life which we're going too fast to truly appreciate. For example in my fortunate life as a monk, I don't just hang around with some president like in this place like Haymen island, sometime I hang out with murderers, and rappers and you go to prisons, amazing as a monk you see just such a range of human beings. Now when you go and see rappers, murderers, thieves, some people does some terrible terrible terrible crimes, its amazing what happen, because you know how to go slow, you can look at a person and just like that hill side, you see the grass become so beautiful, see the rocks you see features in there which you never notice before, you see just a bark on a tree the tessellated texture becomes exquisites. So you looked at someone who had murdered a child, and you see things there which most people will never notice, you see their exquisite beauty, that's a great test, it's easy to see the beauty of the hill side, but to see such beauty in such people are being locked up for many years in jail is more of a tuft ask. What happen when you do that? When you have such a positive attitude towards life, you can see beauty in the most unexpected places.

What happen is.....this happened many times, so often and I notice this is really useful. Than prisoner, that murderer that rappers, they feel that someone is respecting them, and that's an amazing changed for someone who's done such an act. The person comes in to where they be confine, to the place of imprisonment, and it is a mental torture, and their respected, and it’s such strange experience for them to have someone who looks at them and see something beautiful and good, that they too started to change the way they looked at themself. If I can see something in them, and they respect me for being honest and truthful, than they think that maybe that such a beauty does exist in them, and they start looking for it themselves. The murderer starts to see an other part of their being, the beautiful part. When that starts to grow and prosper you find that when they do get release they are healed. The reason, the sickness, so the cruelty whatever it was that pain which allow them to do such a thing is now gone, and in this life and in their future life, they will never ever do such a thing again. Is amazing what happens. Like it was the whole attitude was reinforced.

When last weekend I was teaching at a conference of the institute for mental health in Singapore, where in Singapore when you hear the old Woodbridge Hospital which now they’ve move and renamed, because maybe had a bad association with mental sickness. And I was so please after I gave a presentation so well received that one of the fellow there, he was quite a staunch Christian, he ask me, “can you come and give a bless at my ward, give a Buddhist blessing please, which was well you know in Singapore is quite something. But when I was talking to him and to many other staff there, the head of department told me of the philosophy in that hospital was to focus on that part of their patient which was saying sociable which was kind, which was intelligent, they weren’t focusing on the psychosis, they weren’t ignoring the skids of frantic fantasy, they were focusing on something else, I thought wow! You guys have understood, because if you focus on somebody’s fault, that the old two bad bricks, the facts that sometime they act in dysfunctional ways, they speaks in hallucinatory ways, well they behave in sort of avoidance to themselves or to otherwise, focus on that, than you make this person into someone….or make this dysfunction the whole of them rather just a part of them, and the positive psychology say yeah that is that just put it aside, lets focus on the other half of them. Too often we focus on the dysfunction how about focusing on when the rest of the time when a perfectly…I won’t say normal, because being normal is hypnotising so call abnormal, and they are kind sociable, and able to sort of flow in society without any problems or reactions from other people.

When you focus on the other side, the healing happens, and this is such an important psychology to see and so so please at last some body is getting the massage. When you have a sickness, I don’t know how many people when they have say a cancer, say a breast cancer forget the most of the body hasn’t got cancer, than there is still other parts of them, focusing on the other parts of them, this incredible beauty, incredible strength, incredible fitness and power, which means that you can harness that power, the power of the positive side of a sickness, the power of positive side of someone behaviour, and I know and I think many other people can understand it intuitively, how that is therapeutic, how that grows, but mention before just try and have simple ways of talking about this so people can remember, talking that if you have a garden and if you water the wheat, is the wheat that grows and take cover your garden, if you water the flowers, the flowers grows and they take over. it’s what you water, what you focus on is what grows in life.

And this is one of the great ways out of illness, out of tragedy, out of dysfunction, out of psychology problems in life, just out of sorrow and grief. If you focus on the grief the cause of the grief, the problems, of course it will get worse, and worse and worse. I’ve notice this as I was talking to someone recently that…just this afternoon I remembered it cause I was coming to town today we went pass observation city in scarbour and it was there I gave another lecture of grieve and lost conference. And many of you notice the positive attitude of a Buddhism and how we learn to let go and how we move through the pain of loosing a love one, how we let them go and how we let the pain go and how we move forward and how we change our perception, you know the old story of the concert and looking at life as a concert and I was enjoyed concert so much so that I never cried when a concert was finished, you know that story. But one of the woman after hearing my talk came up to complain bitterly, her complain was, are you say I shouldn’t grieve? Are you saying is wrong to grieve? You’re taking away my grieve. She complained. For her she associated with grieve, that she became Misses grieve, whatever her name was, but that’s her persona, that who she was. And she will go to many of those conferences, and she get a lot of support from her friends, that whose she was, and she was not willing to give it up. The person who live too long in negativity become so associate to it, one the Buddhist call attached to it, they become it they are it, I am the victim. I am the abused, I am the person who suffer such tragedy. And because they get so attached to it even though it painful they will not want to leave. Those of you who don’t appreciate that.

there’s a great story which is one of the last story, I think is the last story in that book “I open the door of your heart.” I actually haven told it in public for a long time now, about the worm in the pile of dung. Once upon a time, actually even got further than that. Once there were two monks, two Buddhist monks, and I say this cause I’m a monk myself, not all monks behave well, there are many scallywags monks, unfortunately those are the one that people like to read about in a news papers, the good monks very rarely get in the news papers. Its not news worthy to say Ajahn Brahm meditated for the last three months, but if Ajahn Brahm did something stupid like went to the casino or whatever, than of course, all got drunk because somebody gave us cakes seek in alcohol, than you might put in the news papers, but one of the monks of these two monks, miss behave, the other one was a good monk. So when they died, one of the monk got reborn in beautiful heaven realm, well the other naughty monk got reborn as a worm in a pile of shit, and like this monk we had a lot of friendship, community and fellowship like even here we trying to look after each other, and so after a few, who knows days up in heaven, this ex monk who was born as a heavenly being started to think where is my friend, my old mate I haven’t seen him for a couple of days, so when you get reborn in a heaven realm according to Buddhism, you had all these powers, and so he used some of his power to search this heavenly realm for his friend, he couldn’t find in anywhere there. so he went up a couple of level of heaven trying to find him there, he wasn’t there either, lower heavenly realm couldn’t find him there, he said, ah~ according to Buddhism the rebirth as a human being is one of the best rebirth because it’s not too much happiness it’s not too much suffering, a great place to become enlighten he said ah~ my friend he’s being reborn as a human being again, I bet that’s what happen why I can’t find him in heaven, so he search around the human realm, no trace there either, my goodness he thought he didn’t do something really bad karma got reborn as a dog or a cat, he looks in the realm of the dog and the cat, I know some people here things being reborn as a dog, is a wonderful rebirth, you don’t have to go to work on a Monday morning, but that’s not the case, if you thing being reborn as a dog is a good idea, please remember what they do to the dog after one or two weeks when its born, they take it to the vet’ you know what they do to it there? So if you want that…heh(chuckle), but anyway, he couldn’t find his friend as a dog or a cat, he look all the other animal, still couldn’t find his friend, he wouldn’t give up, he started looking in the lower realm of the creepy crawly, and there to his shock and surprise he saw his best friend was born as a worm in a pile of shit, now what would you do if that’s your friend? You go and help them out. So he went up to that pile of stinky poo, and actually call out he said, worm! worm! do you remembered me? we were monks in the past life, we were the best of friends, now you’ve made some bad karma, but don’t worry I can get you out of this, come with me up to heaven, and the worm in the pile of dung said, first of all I’d like to ask some questions, number one is there any shit up in heaven? of course there is no shit in the heaven, it’s pure and fragrance and lovely stuff there,he said, there’s no shit I am not going. Why not he said, well look it’s fragrant, it’s smell so beautiful, it’s so warm and cosy inside. Those are my food, imagine, there’s lots of sort of Asian in here, imagine got reborn sort of in a big pile of noodles, (chuckle…) well if there’s any westerner here, it’s like reborn in a big hamburger so you can eat it all your day, haha I don’t know what else you like. But! He said no I am not gonna go. cause this was his home, this was his food, this is where he belong, he liked it , and so the heavenly being try to pull the worm out. Now remember worm which live in pile of dung is smeared with slimy shit and so it’s very hard to take them out, especially when they don’t want to go. So the worm which wiggle and run, and every time this heavenly being took it out a little bit it will escape and go right into the middle of the dung again, now this heavenly being, imagine you’re sort of high being had to put your hand in this most stinking smelliest stuff, his friendship was so strong he would not give up. Cause he think if I could just take my friend the worm up to heaven so he can just see for himself, of course he would give up his shit and come up to heaven so much nicer. but of course because the worm never wanted to go it wiggle and rive escape every time and eventually the heavenly being had to give up, and leave the worm to his pile of shit.

Now I often tell that story because, I don’t know how many years I been teaching here, trying to pull you (chuckle) but you want to go? some time I pull out a little bit on a Friday night, by the time you go home you’re back in it again. haha (audience laugh,) that’s what happen with this lady, who was into grieve, she would not get pull out of the shit, she was attached to it, it was so sad to see that, but how can we get out of this? it;s whole bit about the positive psychology, is that you can’t just think it, you can’t explain it, you can’t just have a lecture, and sort of get people out, they got to feel it. They got to know it’s shit. The other way to do that is actually to get more information by going slower, because the slower we go the deeper we see, and as the deeper we see we also see this incredible positive side of life.

I know that people, in Singapore. This psychologist service in Sydney, they say that one of the bigger epidemic there’s not AIDS or cancer, but depression. I’m sure there is many people here have come because of depression before or going through it now or maybe some time later in your life being depress, now look at me having to come here to work again after three months of bliss in my monastery, you think I should get depress? (chuckle) Do I look depress? It’s incredible as a monk, you got this attitude no matter what you have to do, you just enjoy everything. Some of the stuff I have to do is crazy. Again just being at Singapore last Monday, there’s couple of people here from Singapore, you know this is true. Started off my Sunday morning at 6:15, in Canonfork park, teaching meditation, started with a short meditation, you know what it’s like afterwards people start asking you questions, taking photograph, had to rush for the morning so call break first, there were not a break first it was a morning banquet, , people saying please eat this please eat that, I made this specially for you Ajahn Brahm, now you may always see I am a fat monk, it is not my fault, I get pressured force cajole, if you don’t believe me you just come and follow me for one day, see what happens, so I had to eat this big break first and than talk to people and than talk, soon as that was finished I had to go off to this morning service at the Buddhist fellowship, well it really suppose to be a talk for an hour but it went on and on and on questions and stuff and than, I suppose to have some lunch, but on the lunch people come up and ask you to sign a book and ask some questions could have some really big problems in life so you give them, so you give them free counselling, you’re trying to put a spoon of food in one mouth and counsel them about their problems the other, after that was finish, than you have to sort of rush off to a seminar they organise for four hours of giving talks and asking questions and of course, it wasn’t for four hours, it lasted for five and six until about 8 o’clock, and after that you had to go to this golf club where they were having a sort of launch of an education programme, had to give another talk than have to go back to bed to about quarter to midnight, and if anyone look at that schedule, you’ll call that torture, MST fellowship would probably take Singapore Buddhist Fellowship to court for that, human right abuse, war crimes, but of course I enjoy every minute of it. As again you do that and look at that and say, well you can look at it in sort of negative side of it, why me? why do I have to do all these, or you can look to see the positive side of it, and the reason why I can look for the positive side of it and see the beauty in anything, see the beauty in prisoner to see the beauty in the cancer ward is to able to go so slow that beauty just stands out at you, it just so easy to see it, it just right there in front of you.

I realise that in life not what out there is the problem it’s what inside you the problem, and so is this what we see, what between us and whatever we had to experience in life. By going slow, not rushing too fast, life becomes so beautiful and meaningful. Not only that, you don’t only see just the beauty in any type of food or the beauty in any type of experience, no matter what you have to do in life, even though beauty in waiting at air port for aircraft, sitting in planes, the beauty in just going through customs waiting in line for the same sort of questions, did you pack your bags yourself Sir? You said, look at them, there is only one of them, what do you mean bags? I travel light, but you enjoy every moment of it, you had this positive attitude, and life becomes incredibly beautiful and nice no matter what you have to do. That positive attitude just comes from just moving a little bit more slowly in life, so you can see it was there all the time, we go so fasts doing so much do we see none of it at all, see just a fraction of the beauty

I don’t know when I was young, we used to go to school develop our own photographs, if any of you had that experience of this photograph, not digital today, miss so much with modern technology, high tech and high stupidity, that what I call it. You have this photograph in film, put it in sort of a tray, put all these chemical in it and the image would just appear slowly and if you took it out too soon than so the image wouldn’t fully form, it just immerge slowly, first of all you can just see the silhouette and then more detail, the colour became richer as the chemical reaction progress, that’s what happen in your eyes that what your senses are. When we go too fast we miss so much, just when you were eating, if you can have that one of you are eating that curry puff, why is it when people come here to actually eat the food if not the curry puff, people just sell here just to raise funds or something or rather, why do people like eating them why are they delicious? a lot of time is because when you come here you deliberately slow down, when you slowing down you can actually get more taste out of the food. When you slow down and get more taste out of the food, you digest it much better, this is my trick, anyone who have digestive problems sloe down, especially just before and during your food so you can get more taste, because when you get more taste all this juices get secreted in your body, actually the chemical are out to digest there, when you taste more. To prove that just seek of your favourite food, right now, think of it, close your eyes and imagine it hot and steaming right in front of you, sliver comes out, not only that, stuff in your tommy comes up.

I remember learning this when one of my fellow monk a long time ago, he has some digestive problems and so he went to the local doctor, this was in Thailand, and they decide to give him a burial meal, well they still do that, they probably do a ultra sound or mri these days, but I’m not quite sure, but what a burial meal was, he had to drink this radio active guck and it lay in his stomach, and they had a sort of exray machine they can actually seen how this burial meal went to his system, in that way they could actually tested is there any blockages or anywhere difficulties in his digestive track. But the stupid doctors schedule his appointment about 2 or 3 in the afternoon, you know monk we only eat in the morning time, in the afternoon we don’t eat and he being a monk for about 4,5 years. so when he was laying down there that burial meal just sitting there, wasn’t going any where, because the stomach wasn’t used to doing anything in the afternoon, it was half asleep, it was resting that’s what happen in monks. All the doctors and nurses were around him and they couldn’t proceed because the burial meal was just sitting there, until one of the nurses one of a smart girl said monk think of your favourite food, and he’s laying on his back than the burial meal started to moving here all over the place, just a thought was enough to actually to get the whole system going, if you’re not thinking about your food, if you thinking about the tv show or thinking about what’s on the screen or you too busy talking to the person next to you, how on earth you think that your stomach will work and your digestive juices will work? one of the reason we as monk always in silent, be mindful of our food, that’s why we have much better digestion. Simply because we slow down enjoy make peace with things, and allow the whole body to do its job without us interfering. Simple things like that work. Not only that but you can enjoy your food more, it’s strange to think that a monk is telling you to enjoy your food more, a monk is telling you how to enjoy seeing more, some people will think oh monk you should tell people not to get so attached to things, no it doesn’t work that way, the path of Buddhism is the path of ever increasing happiness,coming from stillness coming from natural happiness not a force happiness, that’s why I love being a monk, you’re a happy monk, you enjoying it, monks in our monastery are happy, there are more coming every year, but how that positive attitude, how that happiness come? Comes from stillness, you see such a beauty in things.

But more important from this positive psychology and how it generated from stillness, you just start to see the positive side of yourself. You start to look at yourself and see you’re incredibly beautiful person. People can say that, they said I am a beautiful person I’m a beautiful person…oh…shit I’m not. That’s what most people really think. As a monk you get all these people to come and talk to you, and giving their problems, very rare for persons to come up here and be at peace of themselves, always think there’s something wrong with themselves, usually something big….wrong with themselves, and it takes ages, years and years, and years of talking to people to try and convince them, number one, there’re all right, but I’m gonna go much further than that, they’re beautiful, there’s something inside of you which is incredibly nice, and I told this before, but just…

A couple of weeks before…every year, it was October the sixth or seventh or something…it’s John Curten day, the day that John Curton dies or elected this prime minister or something, because this 4 years ago on that day Curtan University gave me a medal the John Curton medal. it’s actually for communities service, for doing good things for other people. First year after I got the medal…well other people came to see me get a medal, I should go and see them, so thinking I was just doing a duty but I really was impress with what I saw, because there aree people who done good things for the world, especially this part of the world, and are getting awarded, I was just really impress every year to see how people really giving and serving to other, it’s inspiring, so I went every year since, and this couple of weeks ago, well there was one lady there who done a hugh amount in around the Kalimantan area, when she got her medal, she came up to give a little speech, and said I don’t know why you giving it to me there is many other people who is much more deserving than me, and even my group this other people work much harder than I do…and she was saying all this stuff and I remembered…ah….here we go again, why can’t you see that actually you do deserved that, cause when I was listen to what she did …amazing woman, how much she given and sacrifice so for no reward for thirty or forty years of her live given to others, you really deserving that medal, but could she says she deserved it? no, you know I did the same when I got the medal, what the hack you giving it to me for there’s many other people work harder than me, me too, I could not see the beauty of myself, really what I should have done is go up and say thank you very much I do deserved this medal, well it was true I did deserve it, (chuckle) and she deserved it, why can’t people accept praise? Because we have this terrible feelings of ourselves of inadequacy, some forces been hammered into us to always admit your faults and to reject your finer points. No wonder human beings gets so sick, if you make a mistake remember it, feel remorse make amends, you do something good, no no no that’s usual, I’m not going to look at it, I’ll just get big headed, if I keep remembering my finer points. You don’t get big headed, if you receive praise, and acknowledge it, accept it embrace it, you get big hearted, not big headed big hearted. So there’s a symptom that we call lack of self esteem. The inability to see oneself as other would see it and actually praise oneself and value oneself and see the beauty in oneself, that’s what happen when you get still, you don’t just see the beautiful grass on the hill side, when you go more slowly, you often see yourself, you can be absolutely stunt just how much beauty you can see inside of yourself, you never thought that was there cause you been going too fast, when you slow down, amazing you blossom, you just unfold, some of the stuff inside of you never seen before it just so clear in front of you, delightful, beautiful, wonderful, you look at yourself, wow! I am ok, actually I’m more than ok this is amazing this is wonderful .

Why is that so hard to accept even very idea of that, some of you were so cringing against the idea of thinking yourself as beautiful, wonderful, incredible, you can do that and that’s what happen. So a person when start slowing down, meditating, living a more peaceful life, they have much more respect for themselves, even admiration for themselves, now what admired what they respect, is like the flower they grow and grow and grow, eventually they just take over the garden smothered the weeds. The beautiful part of yourself, once its appreciated notice embrace accepted, recognised that grows and all that other little stuff which your fault, your negativity, all that other stuff that causes problems in your life that vanishes. You know what this is called? The path of enlightenment., the path of freedom, the path to joy to happiness. Now focus on it the positive attitude toward yourself to others to life in general, even to death.

What ever happens in life embrace it see it’s beauty, it just a circle of life going round, the winters, the springs, the summers, and of course it’s not so bad I think cause I don’t know, I am over here in Australia, yeah the global finances crises. Complete different subjects. Get this wonderful simile, I was sharing it with so many people, like a place like Singapore. Do very very well about the finances, says it’s like a financial winter, grow than the northern hemisphere, I remember in England, in the winter you go outside the city and you won’t see a leave on the trees, the flowers were all dead, it was no life, even the animal were hiding underground, sleeping, hibernating, in the deep winter time out side of London every thing was grey, dead, trees are like skeleton in the forest. Nothing was alive, there was no hope it was cold and dead a withered landscape. Like an economic crises, but you know what, underneath the soil, you knew this because you’ve seen it so many time, underneath the soil there were seeds, the animal it was alive, powerful life just waiting, waiting for the time, for the warmth the tiny bit of rain, to germinate, than you got the spring month, march or April, suddenly the whole landscape were just bursting with life with greenery, or this animal will jump out and starts to mate and all sorts of hanky panky. which all other monk should…but anyway this just life. that is what you see, what was dead and hopeless and cold and whither, was now full of energy and life and beauty and vibrant, as always whatever happens in life is that the cycle we go through, is that economic crises in like economic winter time, and you know that winter time is always follow by because it’s cycle for the world, you know that, but we forget it, it’s too easy to get depress in winter time, but those of you who have more experience can see in that winter time a beautiful pause, the pause of our lives, when many people are force to something more important than economic activities. It’s just reminder time like in winter time we can stop and be still and peaceful, when not so many things moving, when we see the beauty in dead tree, wee see the beauty in the lifeless landscape, there’s stillness the life inside. Than you know that this is just one part of the wheel. This is all it is right now, in our economic time in your life cancers death falling in love getting married getting divorce having kids, all that sort of stuff, the cycle of our life.

So when it is winter, always know there’s spring coming soon, you know it happen, you’ve been there before, but don’t forget. This is a positive side of life, and you see it more and more, more still you get, so take time in life, don’t go with running around, we have to run sometimes, but at times you just slow down and stop, to remind yourself to centre yourself. That’s what meditation is all about, learning how to stop, but we…. sometime people don’t meditate properly, when they meditate they try and achieve something else, trying to go for it, sometime people just will get more stress out when they’re meditate than before they started. You are trying too hard, you know some meditation object we don’t recommend, like some one told me this a couple of days ago, in Buddhism we don’t recommend meditating on a candle, cause it burn your bottom, (chuckle) and that’s today joke, it doesn’t improve with the years, and there is one I haven told before. Meditate for peace for stillness, cause in stillness you see more deeply, you see more beautifully, and your positive attitude in life grows and grows and grows, that’s why the national institute for clinical excellence, which is the arm of the British national health service, which does test therapy find what is the best for the amount of money they have to spend, testing depression, or rather therapy for depression, compared three type of treatment, medication, cognitive behaviour therapy, which is basically counselling and meditation, which one were the best? of course you know meditation, by far the best, so the British national health service the preferred therapy for depression is meditation, they can only find, enough people to teach it, it works, hopefully today I’ve shown why it works. Stillness exposes beauty and power and energy, without power and energy and positivity and that beauty, wow! you’re not just gonna heal depression, you just gonna go and create a beautiful world expecting your beauty, be able to go to prison and see prisoners change like a catharses, if you do that with prisoners, with rappers with murderers, what can you do without this? what can you do with yourself? to heal to grow and to get out of the shit pile once and for all and leave for the heaven, that’s how we become positive. Thank you for lietening.