healing heartbreak

ajahn brahm: okay, i did notice there's afew people with sore throats who've got coughing, so to make it nice and peaceful during thetalk can we all cough in unison at the beginning [laughter] and have it all done away. so communalcoughing first of all please. [many coughs and laughter] thank you. [more laughter] okay now be quiet. and of course there isno way to control these things so if you have to cough just make peace with the coughingand let it happen. but the title of this evening's talk is going to be on dealing with your emotions.somebody asked me, a couple of people asked

me for subjects to talk about this eveningand i wanted to focus on the big subject of your emotions and how we deal with them, especiallyin buddhism. because this will cover a couple of requests which people have given for thefriday night talk. and you may notice that quite often when i give these talks on a fridayevening i don't really spend too much time talking about the theory of buddhism and theintellectual part which is just really the realm of thought. of course that's part ofbuddhism and you can read about that in books and sometimes i do go into those more intellectualand ephemeral parts of philosophy of buddhist life. but what's more important i've foundin practice is this emotional world and how to deal with life as we face it in our modernage. and especially how we deal with emotions

which have a huge effect upon on our physicaland mental wellbeing. and those emotions range from despair to raw anger to inspiration tolove to compassion and all those emotions are a very important part of our life. andsometimes the theories and intellectual abstractions, sometimes they don't address the reality ofour emotional world. and i want to talk about that this evening- how we deal you know with those emotions - how we identify them and make sense outof them and learn to move forward with those emotions, because i do and also the buddhaidentified a distinction between emotions, there are some things which we do call thenegative emotions which are problematical, there are things such like you know grief,being angry, being afraid, wanting revenge,

having a broken heart.whatever else those negative emotions are we realise they do impinge upon our happinessand our success in life, they do hold us back from progress. so those are the negative emotionsand there is many more you can include in that category. there is also what we callthe positive emotions, things like inspiration, things like compassion. and one of the greatpositive emotions which too many people often forget about is a positive emotion of peace.and i put that in the realm of emotions because that's something that's solid which empowersand motivates you; i'll be talking about that towards the end of the talk - usually we haveto start with negative emotions first of all. and of course i have to deal with that a lot,people usually come and ring me up, or come

and send me emails or come and talk abouttheir negative emotions. very rarely do they come up and say, "ajahn brahm, i'm so happy!i'm having a wonderful time! everything is going well in my life! i'm just having somuch joy!" [laughter] they say nooo..i've just broken up with myboyfriend, ah just my husband has run away with my best friend, i just got the sack fromwork, i've got cancer, someone has died, that's what, the stock market has gone down or theeagles have lost, or whatever it is. people they're always complaining about the negativepart of their life - so that's what you have to deal with first of all. and even sometimesin my monastery people actually ring me up

for counselling - we call that dial-a-monkservice [laughter]. but you get so busy sometimes, i made thissuggestion to have one of these answering machine services - you know like you get inthese government - like press 1 for something. because it has happened that sometimes peoplesometimes their dog has died or someone says can you do some chanting for me over the phone.can you do some buddhist prayers, they ask for. i've done that sometimes, in the middleof the night, to the opposite side of the world - their dog is sick so i've done thechanting over the phone.. sometimes i'm too compassionate. [laughter]. but.. so i've decidedactually to actually, uh, so if you want..we can record these chants and have them on therecorder so if you want a prayer you can just

press number 1. [laughter]. why not, that'svery easy. and then if you want to speak to ajahn brahm you haven't got a prayer so pressnumber 1 anyway. so that way i get rid of everybody and have a nice easy time. but you have to deal with people, and that'sonly a joke. you have to deal with..it's much nicer to be accessible to people, even thoughyou're tired, i'd rather be accessible then be sort-of somehow separated from the peoplewho support you, and feed you, and clothe you, and look after you and your friends.so even though it's a lot of work i enjoy doing it. but when you're dealing with people'semotions, sometimes you have to let people understand, number one, that those emotionsare real, they have a place in life, but also

where they come from. because it's great whenyou have an emotion in your heart, to find out why is that there, where did it originatefrom. because it's great when you track it back, you can see how emotions arise, howthey build up. i don't know how many of you have been to movies, but you can actuallysee that the trick of the movie is to start with the music. you know the different musicsthat get your emotions going and just how even the lighting starts to change. if youwant to get people afraid, you turn the lights down.. and the music is very very soft.. apumbabambumbumbumbumbum.. and it gets people, because actually your heart beats. when you get excited youheart beat goes at that level. and if the music or whatever else. the beat gets that,it actually encourages your heart beat to

sort-of get very very very strong. and youcan even use your speech to say that..something..is..coming.....and make people afraaaaaid.. but you can see howemotions can be generated, just in movies especially by the music by the way that speechis actually said, and also by the lighting. one of the first times when i saw this, howpeople can play your emotions is actually when we started our nun's monastery down ingingegannup because that was before sister vayama was here, and we were looking for anice piece of land, we found this nice piece of land over in reen road but it was on auction.and so i went there for the auction, with - i don't know if he's here this evening - eddyfernando was our bidder. but when the auctioneer started the auction he was very calm, sayingabout this beautiful block of land, wonderful

place for retreat, lovely forests and theriver and then he started mentioning the figures.. and he said, i think this is worth so much,i think we should start for at least a million dollars. and straight away i thought, "ohno". and then he bids for one million, and of course no one bid, any bids for five hundredthousand, four hundred, three hundred.. let's start two-fifty. someone put their hand up- two-fifty. and that's when he started - two-fifty two-fifty, we've got two-seventy-five, two-seventy-five,two-seventy-five, anyone two-seventy-five! we've got two-seventy-five!! three-hundred,three-hundred, wawawawawawa..!! [laughter]. and even i was a monk, even i started gettingexcited. [laughter]. and you can see just how they do this, justthe way they speak, they suddenly raise their

voice and started speaking very quickly, andyou do get excited. and how emotions can be generated, when you see how those emotionscan be generated, you can actually sometimes be in power over other people's emotions.just by acting slowly, and by speaking softly you can calm people down. one of the firsttimes i saw this and it was very impressive was the former abbot and spiritual directorof the buddhist society of western australia ajahn jagaro. i was with him when he was amonk just learning his trade in thailand. because we do learn a trade - this is a trainingwhich we go through. and we were having our morning meal when a thai lady ran into ourdining hall. she ran in, and she's obviously very upset, because they don't usually dothis - interfering in a monk's meal. and she

was saying something in thai, and i actuallycaught it after a while, she said "suchin is dead! suchin is dead! she shot herself!she's committed suicide!". and i got really quite excited too becausei knew that lady, she had cancer, we've been going to see her, talking to her, counsellingher. she was a close disciple of the monastery. and that morning she had shot herself, andthis was her best friend who found her body. she came in to the monastery just straightaway, completely distraught having found her best friend committed suicide. you can understandwhat she felt like. and i understood that, and i looked to ajahn jagaro who was the headmonk at that time to see what he would do. he understood what she'd said and he put hishead down and carried on eating. and this

lady - "she shot herself! she killed herself!"- and the monk just carried on eating as if nothing had happened. and after about oneor two minutes she stopped moving her arms up and down, she stopped shouting, and atthat point ajahn jagaro put down his spoon, put aside his bowl, and said "what happened?"i thought it was a beautiful piece of psychological calming a person's emotions down. becausehe was not responding with anxiety to her great distress, he was just calming her downjust by his actions and by his softness, she too calmed down in the space of one or twominutes. it was the most brilliant counselling i'd seen for years. he was giving her a senseof perspective about what had happened. so by having someone who was calm, was not beingagitated, she could calm down too and see

the bigger picture. which is what happenssometimes, when we see this is my boyfriend that's left me, this is my child that's died,this is my job which someone else has taken, these are my shares which have just all disappeared,it's my team the dockers have lost - i'm being fair because i've mentioned the eagles firstnow i'm mentioning the dockers. sometimes that we when lose perspective wecan actually get emotionally distraught and that was a very beautiful way that he dealtwith that by calming her down to see a bigger picture. not negating her feelings but acknowledgingthem, but calming them down. because you see just how these emotions can get built up,what actually builds them up and how they're created. i just was at a funeral service thisafternoon - and i enjoy taking funerals because

at a funeral service you do have a group ofpeople who are emotionally raw. they've just lost a close member of their family or theirfriend and it's, i've seen many many times just how grief can be created or how thatfeeling of grief can be calmed down to get a different emotion coming up. i can actuallysee that i remember even when my own father died that obviously i knew my mother so wellbut when my father died she knew he was going to die, you know he came very close many times,when he actually did die she was at ease, at peace with it. it was only when a cousincame in to the house and opened up her arms to my mother and said, "oh you poor thing",and of course that meant the floodgates of my mother's tears started coming. and i knewthat if that cousin hadn't said that stupid

thing my mother would be much more at peacewith the death of her husband and my father. it was as if that there was a social triggerthere, that you've lost your husband that you must cry, and that was pressed by thiscousin when, before that happened she did not need to go on that path of grief. andi've seen so often that our social conditioning creates these emotions. and one of the thingswhich i love doing if you're teaching at a funeral is to actually give people other triggers.trigger not to actually generate these emotions in the same old ways, but look at them ina different way. to give different triggers to different emotions. and let's look at another sort-of emotion,the emotion of anger. where does that anger

come from? you know the old story, that someonecalls you a pig, i don't know if anyone's called you a pig today, but now i'm goingto call you a pig. and what happens when somebody calls you a pig? you think - "they have noright to call me a pig! who does he think he is to call me a pig!? i am not a pig! heshouldn't call me a pig." and every time you remember that i've called you a pig, you allowme to call you a pig one more time. every time you remember that i'm calling you a pigagain. why do we do such things? why can't we just say "he called me a pig" and thenforget about it. instead of allowing us to trigger that emotion of anger, ill-will whateverelse it is. the anger that comes up in you, you actually you allow it to happen. thereis no reason for it at all, you don't have

to follow that path. if you trace anger back,where did you get angry from, you can actually see a series of irritations which you dwellupon, you think about, and you create the fire. anger is like a blaze, like a forestfire, but all forest fires they start just with a small spark. and even that small sparkit starts just with a small little fire in the twigs or in the leaves. if you catch itquickly it's just so easy to put out. but a lot of times we don't notice it thateasily, until it gets so big, so big it's a forest fire. living in the bush, and havingexperienced major bushfires, i know just how difficult they are to put out once they arefully alight. it's much better to catch them earlier. if you can catch these negative emotionsearlier, through you mindfulness, through

your awareness, through your mental training,it's not that hard to actually to transcend emotions such as anger, or fear, or grief.if we really want to, we can train ourselves. and it's not like a training of willpower,it's always a training of wisdom power, to see where these things come from, to see theircause, how they're built up and catch them earlier. even some of the people who havepanic attacks, who get very afraid in certain situations, sometimes you think the panicor the fear just comes up almost immediately, but it doesn't, there are signs there.. andtrouble is that sometimes we're so busy that we're not really aware what's going on inour body or in our mind because we're taken up with the needs of the moment. we don'tactually notice how these emotions are getting

built up in us, and how they're being reinforcedby unskillful thought patterns. even like depression, another negative emotion,we create that. and again through some unskillful thinking, not being mindful, not actuallyunderstanding where these things come from we build up the negativity, minute by minute,day by day, until in gets so strong and then we notice it like the huge fire. so what arethe ways of understanding these emotions, especially the negative emotions, is actuallyto trace back where they come from. if you're angry, if you're afraid, ask why. over in thailand, the thais are just so soafraid of ghosts. and there was amazing, that sometimes like the one thing they were mostafraid of was actually being with a newly

dead body. and being a westerner i wasn'tafraid of that at all. i remember once when i think it was ajahn chah's brother that diedand was being cremated, i told one of the monks - i'm just going to go and do some meditationby the corpse. he said "what?!" i said "i'm going to do some meditation by the..". hesaid "have a cup of coffee". i thought - that's really nice. and i couldn't understand whythey were giving me all this coffee. and the reason way they were so impressed that anybodycould sit in meditation next to a newly dead corpse, because they were just so afraid ofthat. so once i found that out, i always went to say i'm going to sit by a corpse, and theybrought all this nice coffee. [laughter]. a bit of a scam because i wasn't afraid. maybeit was because at university i was part of

the psychic research society and one of thethings we found out was that never ever once in a hundred years of ghost hunting in ukhas a ghost ever harmed anybody. so armed with that information i had my research - sowhy be afraid? they can't harm me at all. and that way i wasn't conditioned throughfear. but the thai people, and there's a few thai people here, [laughter], they have grownup with ghost movies. ever since they were small they saw theseghosts, huge, like heads with entrails following behind, and they would do terrible thingsto people. and because of that, just even the mention of a ghost.. i remember this story- this poor little novice staying in our monastery in thailand. because it was a cremation monasterythat day was the moon day when we would meditate

all night...that poor little novice, we dida funeral that day, and were supposed to meditate all night... in the hall. now usually, littlenovices, they are only about 11-12 years of age, there is no way they would stay up allnight, they would sneak off in the middle of their night back to their house. we knewthey did this, it was breaking the rules, but they were only small little monks, sowe didn't mind. and we've go to be kind.. not this day. this night, that little novice,he would not leave the hall. [laughter]. because he was just so afraid of the ghost. see eventhe [laughter]. those dogs must have been reborn in thailand. last night. [laughter].great special effects. now these, here they go again. [laughter].shut up, dogs! [laughter].

there, they're going now. now these ghosts,or rather this little novice, the poor little novice, stuck in that hall, you know 10 o'clock,11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, too scared to go out. when it got to about 2 o'clock in the morninghe just couldn't hold his urine any longer. he had to go to the toilet. and the troubleis the toilet was about 20 meters outside the hall. [some laughter]. in the darkness.so this poor little, you can imagine what he felt like, he had the pain in his bladderagainst the fear of that ghost getting him. so he made a run for it - desperation. heran and he got to the toilet, locked the door. he'd only been in that toilet for about afew minutes when he heard the steps. [laughter]. and it came right to the toilet cubicle hewas in and started scratching. can you get

a scratch..? [scratches tissue box]. i triedto get some special effects.. for the tape [laughter]. a scratch at the door..and thispoor little novice didn't come out of that toilet cubicle for about 3 hours. [laughter].and when he came out he was telling us - the ghost came to get him! the ghost! and he heardit, he heard it scratching. another monk saw that ghost.. you know what it was? it wasa civet cat. like a possum. those of you who've been to asia know they've got squat toilets.the toilets are actually on the floor, and that little possum, civet cat, every eveninghe would go into that toilet cubicle to get some water to drink from the toilet bowl.that was his drinking place. and so that evening all that happened was this little possum walkedto that toilet and was scratching the door

- "please let me in, i'm thirsty". [laughter]. but that little novice [laughs], he was aghost coming to get me! and you can actually see how because of wrong thinking, and becausethere was a funeral that day, thinking all day, thinking all evening, and what was justa little jungle cat, just coming for a drink, he thought it was a ghost and he was in thattoilet for about 3 or 4 hours - poor little novice. now what about you? what do you getafraid of? and are you any more intelligent than a small little novice. why is it thatthese emotions they catch us. and why is it? because we don't see them coming, we encouragethem too much. every time we think negatively, "oh, the ghost is going to come to us" orwe think negatively "i'm going to lose my

job" or we think negatively "i'm going toget that cancer. i'm going to get it. i know i'm going to get it. now i'm fine but i am."when you think negatively like that you're building up the emotions, the emotions youget are built up by many many moments of unskillful attitudes and thoughts. but now we have them. so once you know wherethey come from you know they're actually created. at least if you know that you create them,you actually bring them together, even like grief.. why do you have to have grief whensomebody dies? why can't we just celebrate that fact that we've known these people forsuch a long time. what a wonderful time we had together. now we just let them go. younever cry for the person who's died, you always

cry for yourself. at your loss - nothing todo with them.. so when we understand that we can do somethingabout these things it gives us a possibility to actually to transcend those negative emotions.because when you think about it, reflect upon it, what good does grief do? it doesn't helpthe person who's dead. it doesn't help yourself. it's not what the dead person really wantsfrom you - they don't want you to be unhappy and to cry all those hours and days. if someonereally loved you and you loved them, they want you to be happy, to live your life inas much fullness and joy as you possibly can. if you really revere their memory surely that'swhat you should do. not to grieve for them but to be happy for them. for you to be happy,for them.

so when we can change our attitudes that way,when we can actually do something about our grief, or like our anger - what good doesanger do? every time you get angry at your partner they don't do what you want them todo, they don't get better - they usually get worse! so why get angry and shout at themfor? it just doesn't solve the problem and doesn't actually fulfill its promises. andjust was it in january, when i was going off to indonesia to give a series of talks i gotto perth airport and found that the garuda flight was cancelled. it was actually delayedby about 18 hours. and i was a monk so i just went up to the counter and said, "oh is itdelayed? when is it going to leave? 18 hours. okay, thank you very much," and i sort-ofcalled the monastery and got a lift back to

the monastery. but the people behind me theywere thumping the counter - "you can't do this to us! i've got all of these arrangementsand plans!" i had arrangements and plans as well - thousands of people were waiting tolisten to my talks. but i couldn't do anything about it. and you know all that anger andall that thumping and all that shouting.. it didn't make the plane leave earlier. itdidn't do anything good at all except making people upset. themselves upset, and otherpeople upset. so really what is the use of anger? you can intimidate somebody for a shorttime but they will always want revenge. they won't respect you. and if you're a boss they'llonly do what you want, they'll only do what you want for the time being, only becauseyou're there. they won't do what you've asked

them out of respect. just out of fear. andthat's no way to have any sort of relationship or any sort of business. really anger doesn'tmake any sense to me. so anger and fear and grief and depressionthese are negative emotions. so first of all when these happen what should we do aboutthem? there's something in buddhism called the secondfactor of the eightfold path. the eightfold path is a way to happiness to enlightenmentand the second factor is one of my favourite factors of that path. it's called right intentionor right attitude. and i love that because it is an attitude which we have to everythingwe deal with in life. whether it's the physical world or the emotional world. the path toenlightenment hinges on our attitude to things.

so if you have depression or anger or grief,what should one's reaction be? and the three parts of right attitude in buddhism - secondfactor of the eightfold path - is letting go, kindness and gentleness. the three factors.the letting go one is the hardest one for people to understand because they don't knowwhat they're supposed to let go off. it's not letting go of the grief, it's lettinggo of the person that doesn't want the grief. it's letting go of the controlling. becausesometimes when people have grief, disappointment, broken heart, anger, fear, when we try anddo letting go we think letting go means destroying those emotions. that's disrespect to thoseemotions. instead, we let go of that person inside who's trying to do something aboutthis, the controller, the one who says "i

don't want these emotions, i have to get ridof them". that's the thing we have to let go of. the control-freak. so if you have thoseemotions inside of you and you try to suppress them, get rid of them, destroy them, of coursewhat happens - they get worse. if you're fed up and you say "i shouldn'tbe fed up", that's what we call being fed up about being fed up. [laughter]. we havesomething called suffering - the word for suffering in buddhism is dukkha. we call suchthings double-dukkha. it's like i'm angry - "i shouldn't be angry! i'm a monk!". you'regetting angry at being angry. you're depressed, and i'm fed up with being.., i don't wantto be depressed anymore! you're being depressed about being depressed! or you're afraid offear. those are called double-dukkha. double-suffering.

and of course from double-suffering we gointo the next stage of treble-suffering. [laughter]. i'm angry about being angry about being angry.i'm so sad about being sad about being grieving. now this is actually what people do. theyactually build it up by their reactions of trying to get rid of things, controlling things.the first part of the buddhist reaction, the wise reaction, is just accept this is yourreality. let it go, let it be if you like. so stop messing around with these emotionsin this moment, stop adding negativity to the emotions you're experiencing right now.if someone is grieving for the loss of a child, or they're disappointed because a relationshipthey cherished is no longer viable, or if they're afraid - be honest to that fear. it'sjust part of life. it's just your reality

at this moment, don't take it personally,as an affront to your arrogant idea of who you think you are. when you accept it, youstart to undermine it. it's a wonderful thing to know that when you're at peace with fear,fear dissipates. when you're not angry at anger, the anger just loses its power source,it just dissipates. when you're just at peace or accept the grief, the grief doesn't lastvery long. it's when we try and control these things and get rid of them that we're actuallyfeeding them. so we let go of this controller. we're kindto our emotions, even our negative emotions. so when you have, you know a negative emotion,you're disappointed, you're fed up, look at those emotions like beings in this world,be compassionate to the beings which exist

in your mental landscape. and we should neverbe cruel, we should be gentle to ourselves and allow these things to be.. because toooften we do violence to our emotional world, and because we do violence to our emotionalworld, it's against the gentleness of this second factor of the eightfold path. becausewe do violence to that world - "i shouldn't be afraid! i shouldn't be grieving! i shouldn'tbe angry!" you can see that that makes more negative emotions for your future. basicallywe call this the law of kamma. the emotions you have now have been generated by what you'vedone in the past. but they're there - you can't undo the past. you're stuck with this,the results of your past kamma. i don't mean past life - i mean what you've been doingtoday, it's created this moment you're feeling

now. but now what are we going to do aboutthis. it's the kamma we do in the moment which is most important and if we face this moment,maybe a moment of grief, it may be a moment of fear, it may be a moment of sadness, amoment of anger, we can face this moment and say "this is a result of past kamma, whatam i doing about this now? i'm going to make good kamma with this feeling. i'm going tolet go of trying to control it. i'm going to be kind to it. i'm going to be gentle withit. i'm going to respect it. allowing it like every other being in this universe to be - theyhave a reason to be here. i'm going to allow them to be and accept them and be at peacewith them." when you can make peace and be kind to theemotions you're experiencing in the moment,

a wonderful thing happens - the emotionalpain loses its sting, and the tightness of that emotional knot starts to unravel. whetherit's a broken heart, or whether it's grief over the loss of a child, when you reallylet it be, we call it healing. we call it sort-of fixing up the problem. we call itmoving on. we call it just growth out of that sort-of dark part of the heart. things change. but when you fight those emotions,when you think they shouldn't be there, when you're not kind to them, when you try andget involved with it, you always mess up. so this is actually using this law of kamma,these things are because of the past, what am i doing about it now? and that way youcan actually take these negative emotions

and they start to disappear. they don't lastall that long. there's a story - a wonderful story - in mybook and the reason i mentioned it this afternoon at the funeral, the reason i mentioned itbecause i got a letter from united states last week and somebody had listened to thetalks on the internet, they read my book "opening the door of your heart", and there's a storyin there about the emperor's ring, "this too will pass", that story, if you haven't heardit before, it's a powerful story, about an emperor, a young man who took over the kingdomwhen he wasn't really mature enough to know how to lead. and so whenever things were goingwell in his kingdom he'd always have celebrations and parties. and because he was spending toomuch resources and too much time celebrating,

and not actually doing the running of thekingdom, the good times never lasted all that long. and when the terrible times, the badtimes, bad economy, unrest, social disorder, whenever there was trouble in his kingdomhe'd get so upset and depressed he'd stay in his room and sulk and cry, which meanthe wasn't working during the difficult times. and the ministers they realised that theirleader, their king, their emperor, wasn't really working properly, and that's the reasonwhy there were too many bad times and not enough prosperous times. you can't just tellthese people what to do. even these ministers in the howard government, they can't telljohn howard what to do. they've got to be sneaky, they've got to be wise, and so whatthese ministers did, instead of telling their

emperor what to do, they just went to a goldsmith,asked for him to make a ring, the only difference between that ring and ordinary rings was whatwas engraved on the outside, which was the words "this too will pass".and they gave that ring with the engraved words "this too will pass" to the emperor,told him to wear it on all occasions, that's all, and the emperor did. whenever there werebad times he would look upon the ring, "this too will pass", he knew by nature he didn'thave to force those negative emotions and those bad times out of his kingdom, he knewthey would pass naturally. and because he knew the bad times would pass, it gave himwhat's called hope, and when there's hope we can work, where it's hopeless we thinkthe grief is going to last forever, the broken

heart was always going to be there, you'llnever find another partner ever in life. or you'll never find that money again on thestock market, or whatever it is your chance to win the cup is gone forever. when you thinkit's forever that just makes life hopeless and you don't work. you don't make kamma anymore.but when actually you have hope, there's always something you can do. it gives you that motivationto work even in difficult times of your life. and actually the reason i'm saying this wasbecause the photograph someone sent me was actually from the graduation ceremony of virginiatech university, recently, and i think you all know what happened at virginia tech inapril, i was in london at that time. i think it was 39 young men and women were shot downby that murderer? you know, while they were

on campus. and at the graduation ceremonyone of the graduates, you know the funny hats they wear, they're called mortarboards, withthe flat top, on the top of his mortarboard he'd actually painted the words "this toowill pass", in memoriam of the pain that had happened in that university in the biggestserial killer murder in united states history. that's why he said "i don't know whether thisguy's read your book or what", by he's obviously got the message. and it is a powerful messagebecause it gives you hope, it allows you to let these things pass away.so "this too will pass". the other part of that story, which is very valuable to consider,is that that emperor wore that ring not just in difficult times but also in the happy timesas well. because it's in the prosperous, happy,

good times that we should always remember,"this too will pass". because he knew that the happy prosperous times were also fragile,he had a few celebrations but not many, because he knew he had to work hard to make sure thoseprosperous happy good times lasted as long as they possibly can. and they did. he becamea very successful and well-loved emperor because the bad times were very short and the happylong times were longer than anybody could ever remember.and of course you know who that emperor really is - it's you. and your empire is your life,your body, your family, your environment. when we have these negative emotions whatwe're actually saying, we're sulking, we're forgetting, "this too will pass". but alsowhen you have the positive emotions, when

you have happiness and joy and inspiration,please never take them for granted. they also need to be guarded, and cherished and nurtured,otherwise they go too quickly. so when we have our positive emotions, when things aregoing well, be careful, don't get heedless and think "oh my life is going well now, i'mhealthy therefore i don't need to exercise anymore, i have a wonderful relationship nowso i don't need to put effort into caring for my partner, i have a wonderful buddhistsociety now, so i don't need to put donations in the donations box anymore [laughter]". you've got to keep caring, otherwise the wholething sort-of falls apart! "i'm happy, therefore i don't need to put effort into my happinessanymore." be careful there because all these

positive emotions, they're fragile, you knowwhere they're caused from. if you have the happy emotions well done, if you feel well,you're happy, you have these beautiful inspirations of kindness and generosity, now how does thatfeel? the positive emotions are great. they need to be cultivated. where do they comefrom? just like the negative emotions, when you're happy, where does it come from? youcan actually see the positive thoughts get more and more and more, like in the movies,when they have a romance. in a romance movie, it's years seen i've seen these movies, buti'm sure they haven't changed, they don't fall in love at the very beginning and getmarried. that happens at the very end of the movie. it all builds up to this. so the wholemovie is building up to the suggestion that

these two people are going to meet and behappy and all their problems are going to be solved. and that thought is been on yourmind again and again and again for about an hour, an hour and a half, so when they domeet, "oh at last they've met!", you get emotional, you start crying, "oh isn't it wonderful",because that emotion has been built over the whole course of the movie. and once you understandwhere these positive emotions come from, you can actually start building them up insideof you. one of the things which i teach my monks,teach nuns, teach yourself as well - negative emotions they come basically from what wecall the fault-finding mind. you always see what's wrong in other people, you see what'swrong in yourself, what's wrong in the monks,

what's wrong in the buddhist society, what'swrong in the government, what's wrong in the whole world! and that gives a lot of negativeemotions. why don't we look at the other side - not the fault-finding mind, but what wecall the gratitude mind. when we see the beautiful in our buddhist society, you see the beautyin your partner, you see the beauty in yourself, you see the beauty in our wonderful primeminister mr howard [laughter]. what are you laughing for, you cynical group? [laughter].you can see the beauty in these things! and jee, i mean i wouldn't like to be a primeminister. would you? it's a very difficult job. so when you start to see the positiveparts in these people, you're actually generating the positive emotions such as respect. howmany people actually have respect for their

parents, for their partners, for the peoplein authority? why do we disrespect our systems? because we've been cultivating those fault-findingnegative thoughts in our media, in our newspapers, in our conversations. no wonder we have alack of disrespect. you know if you ask people in other countries they look at australia- "this is a beautiful land. it's pretty well governed. it could be better but could certainlybe a lot worse!" so why don't we have respect for our institutions, why are we so negative?you know if we're so negative with our institutions, we get very negative towards our partners.why is it that in our modern life people have such a hard time finding a life partner, keepingthem, sticking with them? because they always find fault with each other. and why do peoplealways have lack of self-esteem, getting depression,

because they start finding fault with themselvesas well. i'm not good enough. they're not good enough. life's not good enough. be carefulbecause that path leads to big depression. we're actually building up those negativeemotions and instead we can build up the positive emotions. we deliberately look for somethingin our partner we can respect and love and care for. we deliberately look in somethingin ourselves which we can love and care, respect. we deliberately look for something in lifewhich we care about, we love and got passion for. and that way, by focusing on that, we'rebuilding up, generating, the positive emotions of life. and when you start to learn how youcan generate those positive emotions, the path becomes clear just how you can have asort of control of this emotional world of

yours. you're not just like a rudderless ship,always going through these storms and these calms of the ocean of your emotions, but youcan actually have some guidance there, you can generate beautiful emotions. that's basicallyjust what our whole path of buddhism is. letting go of the negative emotions and generatingthe positive ones. compassion is a positive emotion. it's not just something you talkabout, and just throw that word out "compassion". yeah, we all know we should be compassionate.and i'm sure at the dalai lama's talk everyone's saying "yeah we should all be compassionate".but then afterwards when somebody cut in front of them in the traffic jam - "you stupid..!you shouldn't do this!". we have to actually act compassionately, be compassionate, generatethis positive emotion. this is actually how

we do this, you know, through our mindfulness,and our care and our understanding of life, we realise that whatever we're faced within life, that's result of old kamma, what's the kamma we're doing now? by generating thisbeautiful allowing this moment to be, respecting this moment, but being kind to it, being gentle,we are actually developing these positive wonderful emotions, of respect, of gratitude,allowing things to be, compassion, even inspiration. what a beautiful emotion inspiration is.when somebody says something or does something and it just raises your heart and gives youhappiness for hours sometimes days sometimes years. these are the emotions we should bedeveloping. imagine if we were a nation, a world, which ran more on inspiration ratherthan its opposite, desperation. inspiration,

it uplifts us and gives us energy, becausethe positive emotions empower you to do something really worthwhile in this world. the negativeemotions - anger, fear, depression, grief, what does that do - that immobilises you.anger sometimes gives you some energy, but it usually just wears you out after a while.you can't do anything in this world - you can't do things. the positive emotions giveyou power, and open the path to achievement, achieving something really worthwhile in thisworld. things like love, compassion, they're not something which is your birthright. youdevelop these, you train for these things. just like an olympic athlete, you train andtrain and train, by guarding your mind, changing the outlook, making good kamma, mental kamma,with whatever you have to deal with in life.

allow it to be. be kind, be gentle. when youcreate this beautiful kindness and gentleness, this wisdom this compassion grows and growsin you. this is not just in your life. even in that book which i wrote, "mindfulness,bliss and beyond", i made an important point even in meditation. successful meditatorsare those who have an understanding of their emotional world, because even the path ofmeditation is an emotional path. very early on you have to suspend your intellectual thinkingand feel your way through the path of peace. to allow that peace to develop into the amazingemotions which sometimes you get in deep meditation. there's so much joy and happiness, and whydoes that come from? because you're grateful just to be in this moment, no fault-finding,so gentle to every breath, to every mind-moment

- so accepting. and that builds up. the mostpowerful emotion which i know, the inspiration of peace in deep meditation, and that hasmoved me to tears. i've cried many times as a monk. but not out of grief, or out of anger,or out of frustration. just cried out of pure inspiration, beauty, joy, delight, eitherin seeing amazing inspiring feats of others or just seeing the beauty and peace in yourown heart. this is actually what happens and why i've often said that it's the femalesin general do better in deep meditation. simply because they have more familiarity, in generali'm saying, because there are many exceptions - and you're probably one of them [laughter]. but i've noticed that because you do needthat emotional sensitivity to be able to allow

these positive emotions to grow, to be ableto develop them in the first place. deep meditation is a powerful emotional state. it's not ablanking out. it's not an intellectual state. it's what you feel - deeply. the whole pointof mindfulness is being deeper where you already are - feeling it, being it. not with thought,with this mindfulness which can accept the power of a still mind. those forces get veryvery strong. i'd say the highest emotion i've ever felt are the emotions in deep meditation.so still but incredibly powerful. they move you to become monk, they move you to stayas a monk, they move you to teach, they empower you. so these are the very highest emotions.so in buddhism we're not saying you should be this emotionless zombie, like a robot,because that's what sometimes people think.

they think when you meditate you can't getany rise out of you, you're not supposed to tell jokes, or laugh at jokes, you're supposedto be like this automaton who doesn't feel because you're supposed to have no craving,no emotions, no attachment, you're never unhappy, you're never happy, you're sometimes in thismiddle just like.. if that was the case i would never be a monk. we start the path withthe corners of our mouth turned downwards, in the middle part of the path the cornersof our mouth are horizontal, as the path develops those corners go higher and higher and higher[laughs]. it's great seeing these enlightened masters in places like thailand - and they'rethe happiest people who would really laugh. that told me something, that the goal of thisis not being emotionally dead. the goal of

this path is having those negative emotionstranscended and replaced by this beautiful inspiring peaceful kind compassionate empatheticemotions. caused by letting go of control. caused by kindness. caused by the great gentlenessof respect to every moment. that way whatever's happening to you in yourlife, the negative emotions, make peace with them, they're going to pass, they're partof things. you might not know it at the time but i call them growing pains. your heartis growing when it's crying, when it's hurt - it's part of things, so allow it to be.be with it and you'll find out why it was there for you, what it's teaching was. whensomebody dies it tells you the value of life. when you break up with someone you love ittells you how valuable relationships are.

when you get disappointed it tells you justhow your expectations were far far too unreal. when somebody dies, it shows that your timehere is not that long, so i must make better use of it. all of these so-called negativeexperiences they're all teachers, so we should never reject them. allow them to come introour heart. make good kamma with the bad kamma you're experiencing now. that way we growand those positive emotions become stronger and stronger inside of us. we become beaconsto the world, people who don't get afraid, don't get angry, who don't have grief. buthave lots of kindness, lots of joy, huge amounts of peace. positive emotions grow at the expenseof the negative ones. they grow and grow and grow. this is actually the path. what a wonderfulthing it is to cherish and nurture these beautiful

positive emotions of life. understand wherethey come from, nurture them, grow them, the negative ones become less and less a partof your repertoire. you don't get angry, you get very kind. you don't get depressed, youjust get wonderfully inspired. you don't get so fault-finding, you'd be grateful in thesmallest of things, even in... i shouldn't say that, i was going to say a small johnhoward. the smallest of things.. [laughter]. i shouldn't give him a hard time, he's nota bad guy. and that way we can have a happier life and we can understand the role of emotionsin life, how to deal with them, how embrace them, how to generate the positive ones andhave a happy time. so may you all have a happy time by developing the positive emotions,understanding the negative ones, and understanding

how this all works. so that's the talk forthis evening, thank you very much for listening. audience: sadhu, sadhu, sadhu ajahn brahm: okay as usual, are there anyquestions or comments about the talk this evening on emotions? yeah, okay. man 1: ...[difficult to hear] (if we pointone finger at someone, three point back at us)... ajahn brahm: yeah, you're talking about thatone. that's the old story. see three, you don't know what the thumb is doing, but one'spointed that way.

man 1: [difficult to hear] ajahn brahm: yes that's right, so if you criticisesomebody else.. this was actually a saying of the emperor ashoka. who was a buddhist,was it it 200 years before the birth of...about 22 hundred years ago or something. and hewrote in stone, we know what he said because those stone monuments are still there. usuallyin museums now, some are in their original place. he said this wonderful thing that anybodywho criticises another person's religion thereby criticises his own faith. that's a wonderfulthing to say 22 hundred years ago, what a beautiful way of tolerance. you criticisesomebody else's religion, then you're showing that your own faith is not really up to scratch.it's not just religion - if you criticise

somebody else then you're showing your ownunderstanding of life is lacking. how can you criticise others? how much do you knowabout them, why they did that? how many times have you been criticised - unfairly? so whydo you go criticising others? give them the benefit of the doubt. and you have a happylife. and there's much doubt to give people the benefit of.. [laughter] okay thank youfor that eddy. we've got a question there, and then overthere, yes man 2 [hard to hear]: your holiness, i wasintrigued by your labelling of grief as a negative emotion. the way i see it negativeemotions are destructive. now when my mother died and i had grief, it wasn't a negativeemotion. out of my grief came hope and inspiration,

determination and respect and all those thingsyou talked about. and when a loved one dies and we have grief, i think, i put it to youthat we have grief because we have a connection, it's the spirit connection within us - it'sthat god part in us that connects with the god part of that other person. so thereforeit's the passing of the spirit. that when we have grief over death it's about the passingof that spirit which we accept. so i put it to you that grief is not a negative emotionbut it's intrinsic in the emotion of love because out of love comes joy and peace andpatience and kindness, gentleness, prayerfulness, goodness and understanding and self-control.now, in close, if you made a comment i'd appreciate it.

but i've noticed that you've mentioned johnhoward, now i respect john howard because firstly as a father, he's been a great father,i'm a father, and secondly he's been a magnificent leader to this nation for a long period oftime, so i think we should respect him for who he is. ajahn brahm: i agree with you with respectyes. okay, it's a long question there and usually i try to repeat this for the tapebut that was too long a question to repeat it for and wouldn't actually catch it butthe first thing, i'm just going to do this in brief. the main question was about - isgrief intrinsic to love? and i certainly thought that way when i was very young, but i knowthat i never had grief when my father died

but i loved him very dearly. i couldn't understandwhy that was, and only later on when i went to buddhist countries and spent nine yearsin the north-east of thailand which unlike sri lanka had not been, i would say influencedby "western" civilisation. the west had never got to thailand, or rather they never hadcolonised it. and so it was, what i could actually possibly call a pure buddhist culturethere. and in the nine years i was there i never saw grief. and this was living in a village very closeto those people, we were part of the family, and many times i saw people die. the funeralswere held in our monastery. i never saw tears. it wasn't part of their repertoire. that provedto me was that grief is not intrinsic in the

human condition. there was a culture whichdidn't have it. and it wasn't just the funerals. you'd see them afterwards, the next day, weeks,months, they were part of your family, the extended family of a monastery embedded ina couple of villages in the north-east of thailand. and those people loved each other,but there is a another type of love, which is a love which will let go.. which will leta person go into a death. so grief is, and we're not saying that grief is wrong or bad.we're saying that it's a negative emotion because it does, and i've seen it many times,actually stop a person's growth for weeks, for years. you're disabled for the time thatyou're grieving, until there usually comes a time when you transcend that, you go throughit, past it. and the quicker that happens,

the better.. i would say.and certainly if you look in the buddhist texts the grief was never encouraged by thebuddha. he would always actually say that the wise person is beyond that grief, couldunderstand the nature of life and death, and in that understanding could let that naturebe. and never fight battles which you can't win. there's a famous buddhist story, it'sin the dhammapada, i'll just go on with this, it's a man who cried for the moon. a man wholost his only son, and would go to the cremation ground every evening to cry and cry and cry,and his family let him cry for a while. but when he was crying overmuch they wanted tofind some way of overcoming his grief which was going on far too long, ruining his healthand his business as i've seen happen. they

hired an actor and the actor went to the cremationground also, and the actor was crying more than the father who'd lost his son. when theymet together, these two men crying their eyes out, the actor crying more, the actor asked,"what are you crying for?" he said, "i've lost my son. he's dead..". "what are you cryingfor," said the father to the actor. "i'm crying for the moon". "what do you mean, crying forthe moon?" "it's my birthday last week, and my father asked me - what do you want? andi said i want the moon please. and my father wouldn't get it for me, and i'm so upset..i'm crying for the moon." and the father said, "you're stupid. you're crazy! why are youcrying for? no-one can give you the moon!" "you call me crazy," said the actor, "you'recrying for your dead son. at least you can

see the moon! where is your dead son?" [laughter]. and at that, this is a story, an old story,in the buddhist texts, at that, the man realised what he was doing, he was crying for somethingyou can never get. grieving for something which you can't change. and that was enoughfor him to stop his grief, go back to work, and move on with his life. the story of theman who cried for the moon, in the dhammapada. but as for john howard, yeah we respect him,but we crack jokes about him. people crack jokes about everybody in australia. it's ournation. you crack jokes about me, maybe not in public but i'm sure you do when you gohome. [laughter] okay so thank you. do you mind if we don'task your question derrick, because we've gone

over time. so maybe can we.. sorry, no announcements,so the announcement is - there is no announcements tonight! [laughter]. so if you've got anyother questions or you'd like to discuss that matter with me afterwards sir, please comeup after the talk is finished.