A session with Ven. Mettanando
conducted after the talk on 'The Essence of Buddhist Psychology'
on March 13, 2003

Announcement :
Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any questions please raise your hand because we have a cordless mike here, we can pass it to you so you can share your questions with us:

Venerable :

Why do monks shave their head. Usually we don’t know why we shave our head, you see. Usually we shave our head because other monks shave their head. But Sigmund Freud seems to have a good idea. In Freudian theory monks shave their head because it makes them look like babies. ( laughter ) . And this stirs up maternal instinct in the mind of our supporters. They feel, well this monk look like our baby when he was young and so they feel they want to support us. So Buddhism survive the hardship because monks shave our heads. It’s a psychological explanation. There may be some monks in the past (if you apply the Evolution Theory, Darwinian Theory) in India who never shave their head – they didn’t survive. So they ask us to shave our head to stir up maternal instincts of our sponsors. So that is the reason according to explanation – Freudian. So you know why monks shave our head.

Question:

Reverend monk, I would like to ask a question here. Just now you mentioned about Buddhist psychology. My question is : how Buddhist psychology can be applied in counseling people especially people with mental illness even though you mentioned that all of us are actually suffering from mental illness, but I still need your views on how we can apply this psychology in doing counseling and helping people with problems.

Venerable :

Very good question. The answer is in my lecture number 3 & 4 of this trip - I will give it in Kuala Lumpur. (laughter) You’ll have to catch up with them. Well one of the very important ways in counseling is to put yourself in their shoes, to understand their feelings and that means you have to listen a lot, be very compassionate. And many times when they are in distress they didn’t know how to react. You need very little guidance. When you listen to them their mind starts to open up and then their inner wisdom starts to play their roles. This is how psycho-therapists work – just listening and write down, show a lot of compassion. Have you seen the movie called “Mumford”? No? Well “Mumford” was a very good movie produced by Hollywood a few years ago. There’s a guy who faked to be a psycho-therapist, he didn’t know anything. But how he help people is – he just listen, compassionately., and try to understand them and to offer help whenever he think with his own conscience, this is possible. And most of the time, all of his clients improved - so that was the logic of this. A lot of compassion, a lot of attention. To help a mentally ill person is a work of a sacrifice. You have to dedicate your time listening. Sometimes emotional outburst, bad memory, sometime dream sometime anger and so we have to be able to absorb all these and then you will see from their point of view and then you just give decent advice – short ones, not long. And many times they know themselves what they need. We cannot replace our wisdom for them. We have to allow their wisdom to emerge within their consciousness and then they will know how to solve problems. But a lot of time, a lot of counseling work is a work of sacrifice. You use your ears more than your mouth and you use your compassion more than anything else – so that’s my work And the most difficult time of counseling is when the person is dying. That is the most difficult time.

Sometime the person refuse to say a word. You have to be there, have to be very patient, you have to allow friendship to gradually grow, and trust and learn from the person, has to spend time more and again with that person. So it doesn’t come easily at all Also there are a kind of damage relationship we need to be fixed, you see. Before one person die all these broken relationships need to be fixed. You need to bring people who are acquainted to them, broken love and have forgiveness done. Otherwise that is not a peaceful death. The memory of the person carry forward will be bad memory. So when you learn how to die you learn how to live. You learn how to live you learn how to die means we can die at any moment. And when we die we want to die peacefully, we want to die surrounded by love, we don’t want to die surrounded by hate. We want people to forgive us and other people want us to forgive them and the broken relationship healed. So when we are ready to die at anytime we generate love for everyone without condition. If we have regret, if we have broken relationship we should forgive them now. That is how to die. So if you know how to die, that is the way how you live. You understand the impermanence of life And you know that we need to always love, compassion to each other and feel harmonize with one another, so that’s how we do it. So Buddhism is like a fruit, there are two parts – the psychology of compassion and the psychology of wisdom, only two sides. At the dying moment we need both - to let go and to have full compassion for everyone and be surrounded by compassion. Okay? So only two when you apply to counseling – psychology of compassion and psychology of wisdom, right ?

Question:

Venerable, I was wondering how do you balance yourself psychologically when you are involved in healing?

Venerable :

Well, one of the problems for psycho-therapist and psychiatrist is that you absorb a lot of pain and psychiatrists are the most high-risk people from suicide, they live very short life, most psychiatrists kill themselves. So when you want to help other people first of all you have to be strong and handle yourself in a very balanced way. And you learn, and then you meet people you listen and learn from them. If you think you are taking burdens listening to other people’s complaints, you will get more and more frustrated, overwhelmed with pain and suffering. But if you feel that they are your teacher, you are learning new things from them, there is less burden and you receive, you benefit more than you gave and you will find more answer to what you are searching for in life. So that is how you find yourself. But to heal, to heal is not only physical, it’s also mental. For healing you start inside, in your mind. It’s a psychology of compassion to be applied in daily life and to meet people. To speak sincerely or without, or without words. It convey the energy of love and compassion to other people. That is very significant for doing healing job and I study ancient book on healing meditation written by a group of authoritative monks in Thailand – it was written some time around seventeenth century, eighteenth century, around this period. Forest monks live very peculiar lives, they don’t have a monastery of their own, they move about from one place to another and they have very very interesting philosophy. A lot of time they dedicate on generating loving kindness and they generate as a form of energy, passing from themselves, from their body. When they come across beasts in the forest they generate this shield of loving kindness.

There’s this energy standing, in the air between the person in meditation and the beast and that shield guards the person and then they step a little away from that beast, slowly. Now when they try to heal other people they pass the energy of loving kindness to the food, drinks given to the patient. When they touch they pass this loving kindness energy into that person so that is what meditation helps in healing. And that was the research I did in Hamburg. And a lot has been paying attention to concentration, developing of mental strength and passing loving kindness and energy from inside to the world. There was a myth which surround the personality who wrote this text and it said that when he resides in the woods he would attract a lot of wild cocks, wild fowl from the forest to gather around his hermitage. That’s why he receive the name of being a very holy person like St.Francis of Assisi, and he lived a life of loving kindness all the time, cultivation of loving kindness. So healing is application of this in life. And when I teach people, people who are dying, I start with this. And healing will enable you to generate forgiveness and love, then inside of the person there’s a healing taking place and but to do so you need to be well trained, so cultivate this energy to be a station of loving kindness all the time, okay? I teach in the University and I divide time to teach there. There’s one thing good about monks – you teach what you live, you see? So, other teachers or academic professor, academy has nothing to do with their life. That is different

Question:

Your Reverend, just now you told everyone about the mentally ill, the Buddhist concept. How does one as an individual overcome or cure ourselves of this mental illness and you mentioned that there’s an exception in this mental illness, one group or I don’t know a persons beginning with V, arahants or what, but can you describe or elaborate more on this exception , on this exceptional group who are not mentally ill. Thank you.

Venerable :

Alright. Well I’ll answer the second question first. The persons who are not mentally ill are the arahants. Arahants are “Lohan” in Chinese – people who are enlightened in full. Enlightenment means the person has eradicated greed, hatred and delusion from their consciousness for good. So the person, whoever who expel greed, hatred and delusion from the mind permanently – that person is an arahant. He’s not subject to be reborn again. This life is his final birth. When he die that is his final death – no rebirth.

Then, how can you, if you know that you are mentally ill, how do we do? Find a good friend. First find a good friend who you can share, who can be your good advisor, who you can share your feeling, your thoughts, who you can trust and who is willing to help you. And also second is self-criticism. If you are self-critic, be open to be critical to yourself, admit that you may have done something wrong and all of us have something wrong within. And we are not perfect but we can be perfect someday so we can have a better life. Self criticism and also having a good friend. So we all need good friends but we don’t want to be good friend to other people because by being good friend to other people we waste time, we waste energy so nobody has a good friend. So let’s start with ourselves but don’t avoid being good friends with other people. And the way we do things without wanting anything in return. If we make friend just for the sake of something in return it means we are not a good friend to that person. A good friend doesn’t seek anything for return – just for the sake of friendship. So we should build a friendship with everyone as much as possible. Be ready to be good friend with other people. If you do that , you have good friends, okay?

Question :

Can I follow up on this theme? You said about perfection, human being hoping to achieve perfection. The other religion, I won’t name, but they suggest that perfection is only God and not belong to Human being, so how do you tend to reconcile this?

Venerable :

Well, it depends on the image of the person – which God he believe. The more you perceive God as the most perfect guy the more trouble you have in the world, you see? Sometime we have good fortune, bad fortune all the time and not a thing. Even the Sun has its spots, you see, there’s a spot in the Sun. There are imperfections in genes, there are mutations now and then, there’s no perfect King, no perfect government, no perfect leadership – there are mistakes everywhere. But if you believe that things can be okay then you live in the world of Okay. You don’t push yourself too much. By creating a perfection it means there’s hardly to fit in - it means you have a lot of dukkha, you see? Things don’t fit in and you have trouble. So we have to have to live in a world with relativity. We accept that there may be faults in other people, faults in us and we have chance to improve and other people have chance to improve too. So give Saddam Hussein a chance ( said in jest)

Question :

Reverend, I have a question. In this particular time and I mean for this moment what is the weakness in Buddhism which would be a threat to lead a personal Buddhist or Buddhist society to a very conservative or extreme position.

Venerable :

This is a long question. I couldn’t see a Buddhist to run out to do severe things, asking for war, a religious war to fight other countries or to fight with other religion. It is not possible at all for Buddhist to do that and there is no back-up in Buddhist text to do so. But however there is another way that Buddhists could be, to live life very selfish, and complacent and very stubborn and insensitive to whatever happened around the world and that by just for the cause of pursuit of nirvana and we ignore the world, you see. Thinking that we want to win nirvana we have to let go of everything. This came out of my experience when I studied Buddhism in Harvard University. My research was on Aids epidemic and Buddhism in Thailand. Formerly I have no idea, I have no interest in studying of society at all because I believe that Buddhism is aimed for liberation and my intention is to promote meditation, not to pay attention to the world. One of the problems that I learned when I was there. There was a woman, she lived in Thailand for two years and she observed a very bizarre phenomena. She said the Buddha taught about loving kindness to people, he taught about bad things, about vices and prohibit Buddhists not to do so. But in Thailand, there are three hundred thousand monks and three hundred thousand prostitutes. There are no less brothels than monastries and there were sweat shops, people who take advantage of the poor, more than any other country that you see. Why it happened that way? Some temples and brothels, they are situated just next door to each other. Monks pay no attention. Then that was some kind of thing that start my curiosity – is it true?

When I returned to Thailand I did a research. I was invited to a talk, to about three hundred Buddhists who practiced Buddhism no less than ten years, very devout, very devoted and they are proud to call themselves Buddhists without any regret, without feeling shy or ashamed. And I asked them question : What do you think , if you found one day , your neighbor convert his house into a brothel. The first man raised his hand and said - I’ll do nothing. I asked him why? He said: I start immediately contemplating on impermanence - dukkhata – suffering, and anicca – nonself. The problem I perceived vanished away immediately. So that was his solution. Contemplation on impermanence. So the brothel is impermanent but the brothel still established. So the problem is kept there standing, you see. It’s in his mind – it’s solved. Then another group of Buddhists raised their hands and said : I recognize that these prostitutes are not good but I’ll do nothing. Because they’re paying off their karmic debt. You know, these prostitutes, they were once men before, they were once men before and they went to prostitutes and they have affairs with other peoples’ wives and they went to hell and were reborn five hundred times. They emerged from hell five hundred times and they were born animals, castrated five hundred times and now being animals they paid off these debts, they were then born as homosexuals and they spend five hundred lifetimes as homosexuals and then become prostitutes and from prostitutes to good women, and from good women to men - so man are on top. This is obviously a paying off of karmic debt. We do nothing, we cannot intervene. If we get into this chain of paticcasamuppada, we’ll be in trouble. I found only two schools of answer that they gave to me. I was stunned. Why? Why did Buddhists think this way. So even the text give us good conscience, even if it’s a bad thing, we shouldn’t allow it to happen but those who practice Buddhism in full, seriously, take no heed in that social problems, you see? When I pressed them harder – what do you think? When you see bad karma with these people , they said : I go to temple and donate dana to monks and pray that next life they will not come across this situation again. This is their answer. I was stunned. So I read a book written by an American scholar on Buddhism and society and he explained that there are various strands of Theravada Buddhism – one is called Nibbanic Buddhism, one is called Karmatic Buddhism, and the others. Nibbanic Buddhism contemplate on renunciation – when you see trouble in the world - renounce, get to the temple, meditate, become a monk if you can and let go. The logic is letting go and there you’re free. It’s like ostriches running and put their heads under the sand and think problem is clear. And the other group will say: this is karma. Majority are karmatic and believe that by doing more dana they will build up new castle in Heaven, they will go to Nirvana quicker, fast, have short cut. They ignore problems of other people, problems of society. So we have abundance of problems but big temples, big pagodas, rich monks - plenty of social problems.

That’s how I identified this is the weakness – we don’t have social dimension in Therevada Buddhism. And that was my concern. And the work of this scholar, his name is Melford E Spiro – he did a research in Burma and he wrote a long book and say that there is no social dimension in Buddhism at all. Then I meditate I reflect much more – I found one. Yes there is a social dimension in Buddhism, it’s in the sutra called Manggala-sutra. You see, a manggala is a sign, an omen, a good omen, it’s something good, something good is about to happen. Buddhists are very superstitious – we believe in manggalas but most manggalas have to do with manggalas not related to virtue, not related to Buddhism. The Buddha described thirty-eight manggalas and manggalas relate to problems and solution of problems. When a Buddhist perceive a brothel at the neighborhood and think this is bad omen. Even though it does not happen in our house that bad omen is bad omen to us. We have responsibility to solve the problem, not to let go, you see? The perception of manggalas indicate responsibility and consciousness collectively to the future. That was my thesis – Manggala-Buddhism. Solution to be active, socially engaged Buddhism and create social dimension. By doing so even though the Buddha never talked about an ideal society – utopia – but when everyone of us is concerned about society and concerned about manggalas and we practice manggalas, we are making a change. We are putting forward for the world to be a better place and there is a kind of reconstruction, a renewment, a renewal of society, then we practice manggala. So I use manggala as my main philosophy of contemplation. Within manggala I interpret the law of karma and the karmic retribution in another way. Even though you have done good things but the retribution may happen to other people. If somebody has done something wrong that retribution may even come upon you and we should be responsible to each other, to take care of our family very well, we have to take of children very well, we have to provide them good education, providing them future. The care we give to them, the care we give to the young, to the handicapped, to the poor will be our future. So the world will be a better place. Manggala-Buddhism is a new interpretation on the ways salvation could be achieved and how we connect to each other, and how we should lead our life, accumulation of manggalas and be conscious about manggalas. So in Thailand I promote very much that we should abandon the nibbanic and karmatic perception and communication of Buddhism and look to manggala interpretation in order to upgrade our life and also helping society,………. okay?

This is the weakness of Buddhism – nibbanic and karmatic but manggala will be the solution – how to solve this. So when we learn about this we have to be open and learn about good things of others and look for the common good of each other, what more we can give and we learn to give without wanting anything in return because that is the real gift. The good will come to the collectivity of mankind. When we do, when we see people do something good we have to praise them in front, at the moment. When we see people do something wrong we have to say you shouldn’t do it, it’s wrong. That’s why we greet each other, that’s why we have funeral, funeral is a reversion of misfortune. We come together because someone is in misery. When some people have bad time we come together and try to help – that is reversed misfortune. We have to do that, collectively. We greet each other because by doing so we recognize the dignity of each other, the virtue of each other. When we do something wrong we apologize. That is how we perpetuate the future of mankind in respect to goodness. We build our civilization on goodness. Manggala will create actual and relative relationship with each other and that will create our civilization. That is relativity and also responsibility, you see – manggala. Not to let go.

Question :

Venerable, although I am a monk, although I am a Buddha’s follower and I totally agree and accept the teachings of the Buddha but I still am confused in some areas. When the Buddha was born he took seven steps and the lotus appear from the ground. Thought, after the baby took the steps, did he start start crying for milk or just cry out? This has confused me. After the seven steps how did the Buddha, as a child. turn back to become a normal baby and started crying or what? Very confused. Can the Venerable help to answer this question?

Venerable :

Very important question. I believe this question haunts many people. The answer is you see, what happened – when Suddhodhana return to fetch his baby back to the palace. If you were King, having heard that your baby has a miraculous birth, what will you do? You will not stay quiet You will make a celebration, that your son is a great man, born and performed miracles in front of many people……. but he did nothing. Why? Because it never happened. We have to distinguish two things – myth and from manipulation. Who can differentiate between myth from manipulation? When you hear a story how can you say this is a manipulation or this is myth, you see? If you look at Buddhism alone, life of Buddha alone - maybe not enough. Look at life of Christ, the miracles in the birth of his day, life of Muhammad, is it miracles, life of Mahavira, life of Zoroaster – all of them have miracles. You see? Why? This is the way the community produce explanation of how their leader come into existence. It was a legend that he walked on seven lotuses – that is the image to communicate to the Indians that Buddha is the seventh teacher who is greater than all the six teachers. That was the message - we cannot take it literally. I personally do not take it literally at all – demythologization. Christ, Muhammad, Zoroaster, Mahavira – all of them have this story. And who wrote Abhiddagama how sure are you it’s the word of Abhidda, I can tell you I am sure of one thing for certain – we cannot be sure at all. Why? Because the Buddha never wrote anything. The sangha wrote for him. In the same way community church founder wrote the Bible for Jesus, for Christianity. Muhammad did not write any page of the Koran. His followers wrote it for him, you see? So we cannot be sure. It is a composite text which is handed down to us. That’s why we have Kalamasutta.Don’t believe in Tipitaka. We have to be critical. Trust your own consciousness. Okay?

Question :

Reverend, you also mentioned about human life form, human beings found in other planet or other places and this is contrary to modern science which says that life as we know it has not been found in any other planet. If so, how do you explain this and which planet do you believe that human life exist?

Venerable :

Well, in Buddhism there are many life forms and in Buddhist Tipitaka, it was quite certain that the world is, the universe is huge, difficult to calculate the size and there are many Buddhas and civilizations that sprung up in many planets. There are many story behind that. In Mahayana Buddhism we have the Sukhavatiyuha-sutra, the Pure Land Sutra, which describe the existence of Buddha-field, on the west of this planet. It’s also possible, in Mahayana it’s very clear. In Therevada it’s also clear that there are many many world systems – lokadatu – which humankind were born. So in Buddhism we accept that from the very beginning there are many many worlds inhabited by human beings and their civilization and Buddhas reborn in these developed planets from time to time. I can refer to a number of texts about that too. So we don’t , Buddhist, Buddhism is not a religion that believe in one planet, one sacred planet, and when the world is destroyed it can be reborn again. So the image of the macrocosm and the microcosm is parallel, which is the one and the same. There’s samsara of our planet, or samsara of lokadatu world system or samsara of microcosm. One is parallel, identical to each other in a way that it has changed and cyclic manifestation and in Therevada Pali canon you see a lot of evidence about it. Buddha talked about ten thousand lokadatu world systems and celestial beings came to see him before he died and there are Buddhas on lower lokadatu too. So there are many many Buddhas. So this is conventional Buddhism. But how it grows – it’s another thing. How the system develops it’s another thing but conventionally in Buddhism it’s multi-systems, multi world systems. There was also stories of an Emperor, a Universal monarch who land on earth with hundreds of thousands of soldiers and occupy part of Earth, also in Pali canon and they come from different lokadatu. That is another part of our Text. This is something that Buddhists may share with modern astronomy, astronomers. But I would not encourage you to take it that we are modern religion scientific – no. This text of latter time take the world as flat, In Tipitaka the world is spherical and texts of other generations explain the world as flat. So there are different opinions , characters of the world, okay? So it depend, if you read Tipitaka you have one conclusion but if you read commentary and sub-commentary the world change flat, from spherical to flat. Okay?

Question :

Venerable, I would like you to elaborate on Karma, the ripening of karma. Take for example : a person drives a car very fast who met with an accident. Then another example is that a person who lives not a moral life, still enjoy life, not receiving his karma immediately. Then another one, take for example he does good things, good deeds always but at his last thought he had a bad thought. So can you please explain how the interplay of karma, the ripening of karma. Thank you.

Venerable :

The ripening of karma has been a major problem in Buddhism for a very long time. There was a school of Buddhism in Kashmir and wrote a long text about it – it’s called Abhiddharma – text of Savastivade, a text which explain how your karma which you performed hundred of thousands of lifetimes could hit you at this life. Now if you explain first about person who die and has gone and done good things throughout his life and his last thought a bad thought happened then according to Buddhism that is bad fortune. But when he is reborn the mechanism dictates him to be reborn , probably born as a dog in a house, because he had bad thought. But because of his goodness in his past life so he was born as a dog but in a rich family and since he was in a good family, he was in very good health and he may have done good things because it was a Buddhist businessman family he was born into, so he has chance to listen to sermons, and to listen to chanting, when he die again as a dog he may go up to Heaven. There were commentaries that explain that in the commentary of Dhammapada. This is one possibility. But what happen if that man is a thief, a criminal and he died with a good consciousness. He may born in a good place, may be born in America, be a rich person but his karma follow-up, catch up with him so he has poor health and if he is poor, handicapped, treated badly so has miserable life. So there are many possibilities by this karma but it’s led by the mind, you see? There is similarity, the logic of karma is always this - it always point backward. The logic of karma point back to the past, it never project to the future. When we do, when we see someone in miserable condition, when he apply the logic of karma it will always forecast that this guy has done bad thing in the past. This is the logic of karma. If you see a happy guy, very wealthy but bad, he’s a corrupt politician and he’s rich, then the logic of karma says there must be something good that he has done in the past in spite of the fact that he’s bad, you see?

This is the logic of karmic analysis. You have to overcome it, we never know exactly the cause of his wealth come directly because of the past good deed or because of the money he corrupt, you see? So what we should do? Follow the manggalas – when bad thing happen don’t blame the person, when we see bad thing happen to people, whether good or bad, you have to ask yourself – what you could help. Is this possible? Otherwise we are not living in a good society at all. If we feel that that is a bad karma then what, the logic, the second conclusion is that - he deserve it, we are not going to help at all, and when everybody does that, that person in miserable condition is isolated. That’s why we have lots of orphans unattended by Buddhist temples – girls left to be prostitutes. When Christian missionary came they adopt all these kids, raise them up, become Sisters, religious people, spread the Message of Christianity. And many Buddhists complain – ah these people are stealing our people. No they are taking care of our people in miserable condition, you see? We must not apply the logic of karma in analyzing social condition, but we should apply logic of manggala in life, that means we see responsibility to help the people in miserable condition. So I will not apply the logic of karma to people in poverty, people with miserable condition, handicapped. I think it’s time to express our compassion and I think the Buddha will not appreciate if we are just insensitive and allow miserable things to happen to other people. It’s against the psychology of compassion. So law of karma, I have limited use. I will take priority to manggala and see karma as a sub-set within manggala and apply it only in daily life. When a person work hard and he did a good job, he deserve success and he win success - I admire that. So we should encourage people to work hard and be successful. Not to build fate in luck – for example, work lazily, buy lotteries and win. I don’t think this is a good example at all – this is abhid- manggala, bad omen. We should encourage people to work hard, be honest and strive for their goal of life, be caring to people, family and friends and be successful – that is a good omen, okay? We look at karma of our present situation, not to put trust in something, in the power we cannot foresee

Question :

Reverend, I am not too sure whether I am wrong but I mean, I have been pondering this for a long time. I do see that when we talk about compassion and loving kindness I see that it is very strong in people who are of Christian faith as compared to Buddhists. So I really don’t understand why you know, when in Buddhism we talk about Four Noble Truths, we talk about Noble Eightfold Path, you know? It takes us to understand a lot more but when somebody is sick and in hospital, you see that the Christians are full of compassion and loving kindness in supporting, orphanage, or whatever. Maybe you can give an explanation on that.

Venerable :

There are two things : the perception of reality. First Christians believe in one life, we believe in many lives, so when a person is dying, well so he still has many chance, why to rush? ( laughter from audience ) But you see, there’s a saying in English that the grass is always greener on the other side. Many Christian friends of mine said Buddhists have a lot of compassion. It depends on how much you understand them and also we should be compassionate as always – it’s not a choice but a must in our obligation to be kind. And we take things for granted, we learn from the behavior of other people, we should act immediately – even the Buddha had a hard time trying to inspire his followers to be generous and to be kind, compassionate. He says there are two pairs of people which are very difficult to find in the world. The first is called bupagari. Bupagari is an ultruist, in Christianity you may say he’s a good Samaritan. You help other people without wanting anything in return, you take trouble in other people’s priorities, that is an act of a good Samaritan – bupagari, in Buddhism we have that. In Thai society they define bupagari as parents because parents act without wanting anything in return – they are bupagari but actually bupagari has more general term or meaning that that. We should be bupagari to other people – don’t want anything in return. And secondly it’s a personality of gratitude. People who have done good to us we have to be kind to them – to memorize their goodness, not their faults and we try our best to return good to them. So these are two personalities so difficult to find on earth – in India two thousand five years ago,and probably now too.

The nature of the world change much. And I think it’s time for us to express our compassion and translate the cultivation of loving kindness into action. Let the action speaks our mind and help other people without wanting anything in return, not even think of Heaven or a way to fulfill Bodhisattwa vows, we just do because it’s a virtue. Not because we want anything in return – that may be the greatest virtue. So we should ask ourself, you see, we should ask ourself when we are going to die, if we die today what are we going to do? To express our thanks to our relatives, our parents, everyone around us and then we have to do something good for them, find something or support. There’re also things in this community , if you cannot do it yourself. Let the Venerable do it, support the Venerable. In the kindergarten, helping people who are ill – these are very good jobs. So that’s what we do and not to expect anything in return. We can have misfortune but if we can have love all around us what should we be afraid of? We have good memory before we pass away, that’s what we can do and be happy when we do this , when we leave the world. Everyone of us is going to die someday, all of us will but it depends on the consciousness of the last moment, what’s going to happen. And I wish everyone of you here a very peaceful, blissful happy thought before we pass away.

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