(Translated by Ajahn Tilo on 8 Jan 24)

This talk is given on the 25th of December in 2023.

  1. Wherever you are coming from, you are from Singapore, from Hong Kong, from Taiwan, wherever you are from, you have to get sick, you have to get old, you will have pain and you will die. We all have to know and understand this. Because this physical body of ours cannot last longer than more than 120 years. Then, we have to go from this world.

  2. So we all have to adjust ourselves to the Dhamma. We all have to adjust ourselves to the time. We don’t have that much. We have to take the Dhamma as a principle, as a guideline for our life. What is Dhamma? Dhamma is old age. Dhamma is sickness. Dhamma is pain. Dhamma is losing everything you like. This is Dhamma. So we have to adjust our mind to the Dhamma. We have to adjust our mind to the truth of things, to the truth of our life. So we all have to think in the right way. We have to think getting old, being sick, having pain and having to die, is something completely natural. There is nothing wrong with it.

  3. So we have to be happy in getting old. We have to be happy in getting sick. We have to be happy and finding our joy in having pain. We have to find happiness and joy in dying. We have to be happy and joyful if we losing (sic) things, if we losing people we love, we like. 


  4. But you don’t want to face old age, sickness, death, pain, and losing everything you love and everything you like. You don’t want this, but this is when you have wrong view and wrong understanding. This wrong view, this wrong understanding, this makes you suffer. You have to be happy. You have to be relaxed. You have to be at ease with getting old, with getting sick, with having pain, with losing things, losing people you love, people you like. You have to be at ease with this. Why? because this is the natural way of our life. This is how things are, not how you want them to be. You have to adjust yourself to the truth of things, to the truth of nature. That’s why the Buddha wanted us to have right view, to understand properly, and to have right practice. 


  5. According to this right view and right understanding, find your happiness in right view. Find your happiness in understanding things as they truly are, not as you want them to be, and find your happiness in practicing the path. It’s impossible, it can’t be, that you don’t get old. It’s impossible, it can’t be, that you don’t be with pain. It can’t be, that you don’t get sick. It can’t be, that you don’t die. If you don’t want to face these things, this means you are crazy. If you’re frustrated, if you are depressed, when you’re losing something you like, if you’re losing friends and loved ones, if you’re disheartened, if you’re frustrated, depressed, sad, this means you are crazy. Because you go against the nature of things. 


  6. So you really have to understand and know the truth of nature, the truth of things, so that you can adjust yourself to this truth. So we don’t need to run and chase after our delusion: we have not to run around and crying “oi, oi, oi, this world is so good! oi, oi, oi, oi!” We have to understand the truth of this nature. The truth of our life. The truth of our life: everything is getting old. Everything is getting sick. Everything will bring you pain. And everything has to die and go away from you. This is the truth of your life. You cannot run around crying “oi oi this is so good oi oi!” So we have to find back to the Dhamma. We have to find back to the peacefulness of mind, to a still mind, to a happy mind, to a mind at ease. 


  7. A mind at ease is when you stop running and chasing after sensual pleasures, thinking you can find some happiness in this way. Once you understand, then you really also have to adjust yourself to the Dhamma, to the truth of things, to the truth of your life. It’s really not necessary to chase after your delusion, to chase your sensual pleasures, to chase one orgasm after another. There’s no need to do. You have to find back to true happiness. You have to find back to the peacefulness of mind. And you have to find back to wisdom. You have to come back to find our happiness in breathing in. Find our happiness in breathing out. Enjoy, the breath goes in. Enjoy, The breath goes out. The breath is for your happiness. The breath is for your peace. 


  8. And we have to find back to work with happiness, to find our happiness and our joy in work. Because work is for your happiness. You have to find back to find our happiness in getting old. You have to find back to find our happiness in getting sick, getting pain and losing everything we love and we like. And we have to be happy to die. 


  9. Just think about it. Do you know anybody, he doesn’t get sick, doesn’t get old, doesn’t have pain, doesn’t lose everything he love and he like and he will not die? Actually nobody is getting old, nobody is getting sick, nobody gets pain. And nobody is losing everything they love and they like. And nobody is dying. All that is, delusion and Dhamma are arising, standing for a while and passing by. Delusion arising, standing, passing by. It’s all there is. The body is just doing its job and the mind is just doing its job. But our heart still understands wrongly. Our heart is taking the delusion to be a me, to be a mine, to be a self. Our delusion is creating the sense of self, our heart, our wrong view, our delusion is creating this ego. And this deluded heart is building Samsara, the circle of old age. sickness, death, pain, losing everything you have, building again and again, you get born and you die again and again. We just keep on thinking and creating stories in our head, our mind is proliferating it all the time. When you have something like this, your brain can be considered as somebody who has a husband and a wife in your head at all the time, all day and all night. 


  10. So we have to stop having a wife and having a husband in our heart and our mind. Please stop it. So all of you having husbands and wives in your head, in your mind, with your moods, with your emotions, with your thoughts, with your stories, with your proliferated mind, please let go of this. Let go of this. Leave it alone. Your delusion is still not enough for you. If you are deluded and having a husband and wife mentally, you also start to argue and to fight with your real husband and your very real wife. (Luang Por is saying this because one of the people over there is fighting with her husband, is arguing with him all the time.) Luang Por is just saying the truth. When we have wrong understanding, wrong view, it is not enough that we bomb ourselves. We also like to bomb and destroy other people around us. When we have wrong view and wrong understanding, we are somebody who has bombs and all kind of weapons in our mouth. 


  11. We all have to find back our happiness in working. At night we should sleep at least 6 hours, so that our mind and our brain is able to let the body work properly. The 18 hours we are awake, we should find our happiness in working. Working is for our happiness. But usually people are lazy. They don’t want to go work. They don’t want to enjoy their work. They are even sometimes too lazy to breathe. But our work should not be a work where we exploit our people, where we exploit other beings, other animals. We can’t take our happiness from the suffering of other beings. So everybody, every being in this world has suffering: we don’t need to give them more suffering just so that we can be happy. There is no need to get deluded and getting lost in all this taste and deliciousness in this world. Everything is so deliciousness (sic) that we enjoy, that we take as our pleasure. But actually we are exploiting other beings. 


  12. If you enjoy the deliciousness of this world, this is delusion. This is what you can call delusion. You are getting lost in this. And it is not enough that we are taking the happiness from the suffering of our beings. Sometimes we even enjoy to laugh and laugh. to give them problems, to cause them more troubles. We’re disturbing them. Sometimes we may say, “oh, I keep in precepts. I don’t kill any animals.” But we still enjoy eating meat. This means letting other people create bad karma for our joy, for our happiness. This is how we trouble other beings, other people. We’re using them. We let them kill cows. We let them kill pigs. We let them kill fish so that we can be happy. This is called our mind doesn’t kill by himself, so we are not black, our mind is not in black zone but our mind is in the gray zone. We don’t kill by ourselves but we let other people kill for us because just we deluded by deliciousness. We like delicious food; and in this way we (are) disturbing and exploiting other beings. Even we don’t kill by ourselves. People from Hong Kong, people from Taiwan, they making all this really delicious food. And the Thai people, they are really stupid. They fly to Taiwan, they fly to Hong Kong, just to enjoy the delicious food over there. This is called stupid. This is the truth. Nothing else, just the truth. This is foolish. Luang Por knows by himself. All those rich people, they like to fly to Hong Kong, they like to fly to Taiwan. just to enjoy the delicious food over there. Deluded, completely deluded. When they come back, the rich people, from Taiwan, from Hong Kong, after enjoying their delicious food over there, then they come back to see Luang Por and just showing off. But what do they show off? “We have been here, we have been there”, but we just show off their foolishness, their stupidity. This is what they show off. Not their richness. But Lumpur is thinking in his heart, “hey, why are they so stupid? They show off their foolishness, their stupidity. What’s the point what they are doing here?” Oh please, all of you, may you have right understanding and right view. 


  13. So don’t be foolish, be wise. Everything that is wrong doing, what is bad karma, please don’t consume it. So we all have to be happy, but we have to find the real happiness. And the real happiness is not enjoying taste and enjoying the deliciousness of the world. The real happiness is coming when you enjoy your work, when you love, you go to work and you work with happiness. This is where real happiness is coming from. Because you are giving, you are serving, you are renouncing, you develop the Eightfold Path and you are being selfless. Work is for your happiness and happiness is working. If you have happiness when you work, you really enjoy it, you will not be poor. The Buddha said, once you are rich, once you are wealthy, don’t be deluded, don’t get lost. If you will be deluded in the sensual pleasures and in the deliciousness of this world, it is very difficult, almost impossible, to get born as a human being again. 


  14. So when you stay in the family, you have to love each other the most, more than before. The new generation, the young people, they have to find their happiness in studying and learning. And the older ones, they have to find their happiness in their joy in working. This is just for your happiness and for your joy. Your laziness you have is nothing else than an addiction. Laziness is so delicious. “Mmm, oh, this is so delicious to be lazy.” You’re enjoying this, it becomes your drug. You’re addicted to laziness. So don’t be interested in being lazy. This is not worthwhile. 


  15. What we have to do is we have to adjust ourselves to the time. We have to adjust ourselves to the Dhamma, to the truth of things. Everything has its time. And we have to find our happiness in the work. This is what we have to do. Adjusting yourself to the time also means you have to adjust yourself to the present moment. Just live in the present moment. Make your past zero. This is not worthwhile to spend any thought about the past. Make it zero. There is no need to worry about the future. Please just pay attention to the present moment. If you are doing this, your future will be good. The past is gone. So you adjust yourself to the time, when you adjust yourself to the present moment. If you are doing this, you adjust yourself to the time and to the Dhamma, to the truth of things. The Dhamma just lies in the present moment. It is not in the past and it will not be in the future. So in our daily life, you have to find our happiness in breathing in, and find our happiness in breathing out. Being aware of your breath. There’s no need to pay attention at your surroundings, what’s outside of you. Please find back to yourself. Know yourself. Dhamma is about knowing yourself, understanding yourself, not other people. Coming back to your breath, breathing in and breathing out. Be happy in breathing in. Be happy in breathing out. You can do this. In every posture, it doesn’t matter if you’re sitting, walking or laying down. Can you breathe? Once you can breathe, you also can be aware of your breath and enjoy it. 


  16. Our breath is something really, really wonderful because it is able to make our mind peaceful, to make our mind still, to make our mind happy. Our breath is for our happiness, not the deliciousness in this world. The Buddha and all the Arahats, usually they stay constantly with their breath. They constantly aware of their in-breath and their out-breath. This is their abiding place for their mind. It’s not just that you get a still mind, a peaceful mind, a happy mind when you know your breath. You can also develop wisdom along with your breath. Once you’re breathing in, you should know “this breath doesn’t last. This breath is impermanent.” Every in-breath comes, and every in-breath goes. The out-breath, it comes and it goes. It’s impermanent. And you can see the breath, the in-breath and the out-breath. “It’s not a self, it’s not a me, it’s not a mine”. It just comes and it goes by itself. 


  17. But if you cannot stay with your breath, if your mind always goes wandering, then just stop breathing. Hold your breath as long as you possibly can. Once you’re really short of breath, then just start breathing again once you can’t hold it anymore. Then in this way your mind will come back to your physical body. your mind will come back to stillness. Your mind has to come back because you are afraid of death. Maybe you have to do it several times until your mind gets peaceful. Do it many times, you will be afraid of death, you will breathe and your mind will come back. So you really have to cancel to give up this activity (of) just doing what you want to do, (of) just follow your own mind, your own ideas, your views, your opinions, follow your moods, following your emotions, following the stories in your head or your proliferations or your restless mind is telling you: Cancel it. Give it up. Find back to your breath. Find back home. Your mind is homeless. Your mind is wandering everywhere. It has no place to stay, no place to rest. No abiding place, no home. Your breath is your abiding place. He will lead your mind at home, where you can have rest and can be happy and still. So really cancel to do what you want. Cancel your sense of self. Cancel your ego. Don’t let your mind abide in the restlessness. Don’t let your mind stay in the sensual pleasures. Find back to your breath. If you place your mind there (PJ: i.e. wandering, rather than the breath), if you let it abide there, this means you let your mind abide in delusion. Wherever you let your mind abide in, wherever you let your mind dwell in, this is where your mind will be. This is where your mind will experience. If you enjoy and let your mind dwell in the sensual pleasures, then there is no way that your mind is able to abide in stillness, in peacefulness, in real true happiness. This is impossible. You will not be able to meditate or be aware of your breath. Why? Because your mind is used to abide and dwell in sensual pleasures, in restlessness. So come out of this, cancel it, give it up. 


  18. For the woman, when you let your mind dwell in the dreams of men and thinking about men and boys, at the end, you end up having a boyfriend and having husbands. If you let your mind dwell with anger and with aversion towards other people, then of course you will just experience anger. This is what has to happen. It’s really absolutely not necessary to let our mind dwell in this kind of thinking. We are by ourselves doing this. So you can stop. No need to do it. In order to be happy now, just make your past zero. Make your past not existing. Otherwise you will never find any happiness, never find any peace. Because you let your mind dwell in the dream of the past, that never really happened. You are never really here. You have to be able to let your mind still, stay and dwell and abide in the present moment. In the present moment is all the happiness. In the present moment is all the peace. In the present moment there is no trouble. In the present moment is all the wisdom. You will not find it in the past. So feel free to make your past zero in order to be happy, in order to be free of suffering.


  19. The same with your future. It’s just a dream. Make this dream zero. Delete it. Just let your mind stay in the present moment, the only thing ever really existed since you are born. Make your past and your future zero and allow yourself to stay in the present moment. And in the present moment, give up your sense of self, give up your ego. Just be selfless. 


  20. All of us, everybody has to practice by himself. Nobody can ever practice for us. And we cannot practice for other people. So just focus on your own practice. Whenever you find back to the way of practice and you find back to the present moment and being selfless, you will be immediately peaceful. Your mind will be immediately still. But it takes time and it takes training, and we have to train by ourselves. This practice is pretty easy because it just takes you. You don’t need anybody else for your happiness. So we don’t need to fix and correct our people. We don’t need to blame other people. It’s not our business. Care for your own business. It’s so easy because it really just depends on you, not on external factors. 


  21. Our world, this world, is full of delusion. Why? Because everybody just try to correct our people. Everybody just try to correct the children, correct the wife, correct the husband, but nobody is really willing to correct themselves. So you really have to understand the way of practice. And the way of practice is correct yourself, train yourself to stay in the present moment. and be selfless. The practice is: in the evening time you pay respect to the Buddha and you pay respect to the triple gem. So you cannot play with a mobile phone, play with a computer, watching movies. This is something you really should not do. What is the benefit of this? Instead, train your mind in sitting samadhi and meditation. This is the time in the evening, after you paid respect to the Buddha, to the Dhamma and to the Sangha. Then just train your mind to stay with the breath, to get peaceful, to get still. Yes, it takes time. Sitting meditation and developing samadhi actually means to give your brain a rest, to stop your brain working. Just stop the work of the brain for a while. Stop it. Stop it. Stop it. This is called sitting meditation or developing samadhi. Stop the workings of the brain, the activity of the brain. Give it a rest. Give it a break. You overwork it. Just stay with the in-breath and just stay with the out-breath. Breathing in, breathe in as would be the most happiest moment of your life. Breathing out, as would be the most happiest moment of your life. Breathing in, sabai. Breathing out, sabai. What does sabai mean? Be at ease, we are relaxed. You’re breathing in: “I am at ease with the in-breath.” You’re breathing out: “oh so relaxing breathing out.“ Really enjoy your breathing. Go off. Breathe in, relax. Breathe out, relax. Breathe in, “I am so happy with my in-breath.” Breathing out, “oh I am so happy breathing out.” It’s not that difficult to do. The in-breath is long, you know “my in-breath is long.” The out-breath is short, you know “the out-breath is short.” You know everything about your breath. Be interested in your breath. Get to know it and enjoy it. It’s like you’re discovering a different and never have seen animal. Stay with the in-breath. The in-breath is impermanent. It doesn’t last. It comes and goes. You stay with the out-breath knowing, “oh, this out-breath is impermanent. It comes and it goes. It doesn’t last. It’s impermanent. The in-breath is non-self, is not who I am. The out-breath is non-self, there is no self, is not what I am, is not me, is not mine, is not my self. It comes and goes by itself, nothing really to do with me.” 


  22. There’s no need to want anything when you meditate. Meditation is to stop your wanting, just being with your breath. Nothing to want, nothing to get. This is how you have a break, this is how you have a rest. As long as you want something, you want to achieve something, how can you be at ease? How can you have a rest? Rest is stopping. When we want to get something, we want to gain something or we want to achieve something, welcome to mental problems. Welcome to being psychotic and neurotic. Welcome. You do it yourself. Really important for you to understand this point. Stop the wanting. Stop the achieving. stop all of this. There is no point. You just cause yourself trouble. So when you stop this, then you can find back home. You can find back home to peacefulness and stillness. You can find back to your breath, so that your mind has a place to stay, a place where he can rest. He can be at home, not a restless wanderer. He comes back to Nibbana. Let your mind come back to Nibbana. Nibbana is when we stop our delusion. This is when we stop samsara, when we stop getting born again. This is when we stop having pain again, being sick again and dying again. So we really have to develop our right understanding, so that we can see things as they truly are. So set your time to sleep six hours, so that you can have six hours of really good sleep. And the last over 18 hours, find your happiness, find your happiness in working. 


  23. You really don’t need to waste our time in playing the mobile phone and this other rubbish we are always doing. Why do you waste your time? A mobile phone has many benefits. So you don’t need to go in the airplane to go far away to talk with somebody. You don’t need to sit in the car to meet somebody. Nowadays you can use a mobile phone. It has benefits. If you know how to use it in the right way, then it’s necessary, you use it. But all the other things don’t use it. It’s wasted time. If you’re looking for certain information, certain knowledge, you can use the mobile phone, you can use the internet. This is how you use it in a wise way, without getting deluded by it and getting lost in it. Everybody really needs a strong mind to use the mobile phone wisely. You cannot be weak-minded and getting lost. We really have to be able to control ourselves and get in charge. If we don’t control ourselves, we have accidents. So don’t let yourself have accidents. Control yourself. Get in charge. If we cannot stand our ground and have patience and endurance, then we have a sense of self, then we have an ego, this means you have an accident. If you are arguing with your husband, if you are arguing with your wife, whenever you are arguing with somebody, this means you are not able to control yourself. You are out of control. 


  24. That’s why the present moment is so important. It is the only place where you can ever control yourself. You have to control yourself and getting in charge through right view and right understanding. It’s not that difficult to do. It’s easy to do. You just allow your mind to be restless all the time. You don’t even try to control yourself and to stop it. You think your restless mind is something really special, something really sublime. This is foolishness. So we have to come to be a good person and to be a clever and smart person too and be still in the mind. So all the Westerners, you have to practice in this way. 


  25. The majority of the Westerners, they are all clever, they are all smart, they are highly intelligent. But they are intelligent and smart not in the right way: they are intelligent and smart in the wrong way. They are just taking the material world, and they are just taking the sense of self, this ego, as the center of their life. This is the only important thing for their life. This is where all their intelligence is turning around. That’s why America is highly intelligent and that’s why they develop all these bombs and all these weapons of mass destruction just to destroy other people in other countries. This is really intelligent, but in the wrong way. They try to control other people, control other countries, but they are not able to control themselves. Why is this? Because they just develop a material world, they develop the science, they develop technologies, but they don’t develop the mind at the same time along with it. If you’re doing this, you can’t really progress. You have to develop the material world, the science, the technologies together with the mind, this is wise. This is what the Buddha wanted us to do. When humankind has the right view and right understanding, then humankind can fix all problems, so that the delusion cannot govern the world anymore. That delusion cannot control this world anymore. But now the world is just controlled by delusion, by not understanding, by wrong view. We really have to develop the Buddha. We really have the one who knows. We really have to know and to understand. This is what we really have to develop. All we are developing until now is just our sense of self. We are just developing our ego. But we have to develop a material world and we have to develop our mind together. 


  26. Just find your happiness in doing this, developing both. In this way, your mind, your heart will have an air conditioner installed. You will be cool. Your mind and your heart will be peaceful and you have the warmness. So that all your westerners can stop crying “oi, oi, oi”: just showing your delusions. Don’t really care about it. Don’t be interested. If you see a good-looking person, attractive person, a sexy girl, a sexy boy, don’t pay any attention to this. All this delicious food: don’t pay any attention. Don’t be interested in this. Don’t care about it. Who cares if the food is delicious or not? Your peaceful mind is far more important. Otherwise, you will always be on running and chasing after this what you think is happiness. You will have never any peace. You will never find true happiness. It can’t be that our mind is constantly being deluded, so we have to bring our mind to wisdom, to right understanding: how we end suffering and how we find true happiness, real happiness, not a fake one. 


  27. So all that we’re doing, we have now a certain amount of delusion and we develop more delusion, more delusion, more delusion until we have mega delusion, super delusion. It just gets more. You just have gigantic delusion like America and Russia. We’re fighting with each other. Gigantic mega delusion. Israel and Palestine are fighting with each other. Mega delusion. In Burma they are fighting even with their own people. Mega delusion. We have to really come to the understanding: we don’t need to chase after our delusion. We don’t need to chase after our happiness, our sensual pleasures. Find all back to the way of practice. the right understanding and right view. We have to find back, to adjust ourselves to the time and have to adjust ourselves to the Dhamma, to the truth of things, things as they really are, not as you want them to be. So Chinese people are really really good people. Luang Por can see China is in a good way, China developed very good. But don’t be deluded in rubbish like America. Don’t go their way. So Chinese people really have to understand, you have to find your happiness in working. Working is for your happiness in China. But you don’t end up that stupid and that deluded like America. 


  28. Once we find our happiness in working and really enjoy our work, there is no way that we can be restless. Our restlessness will reduce. Luang Por can see that the new generation, the kids, they are interested in Dhamma. It’s a good thing. This is correct. Once we understand the Dhamma, we know what’s going around, then we also have to put it into practice. It’s not enough just to know it. Everybody has to come to correct himself. Please understand this point: Correct yourself, not others. When you correct yourself, this is where you practice. When you correct yourself, you will find happiness. 


  29. The practice of Dhamma is nothing else than for happiness. If you just do what you want, you follow your opinions, your views, your desires, you follow your moods, your emotions, you just build more and more trouble for yourself in the future. You just create more and more problems. It’s not enough that you just cause your own more trouble, you’re also causing the other people around you more trouble. Why? Because you don’t want to practice. You rather stay with your delusion, you rather stay with your ego, with your sense of self. In this way you are causing yourself trouble and all the other people and all the other beings. It’s not enough that you burn yourself with your delusion and your sense of self and your ego. No, you also burn other people around you. You have to understand: you have to be happy. If you are happy, you don’t burn yourself. If you are happy, you don’t burn other people. 


  30. Find your happiness in working. Find your happiness in practicing Dhamma and getting in charge of yourself. If you don’t find your happiness in work, if you don’t find your happiness in practicing the path, it can be compared and then this world for seven years there would be no rain falling: it would be dry, a lot of suffering. This is if you don’t find your happiness in work, if you don’t find your happiness in practicing the Dhamma. So you have to find your happiness in working, you have to find your happiness in practicing the Dhamma, so that everything in this world can be balanced. If you just want, want, want, and you don’t want to be selfless, you don’t want to be giving and serving, how can you be rich? You will be rich maybe in the material world, but you are poor in happiness. If you don’t practice the Dhamma, how can your mind ever attain the Dhamma? How can you ever become Dhamma? How can you be a Sotapanna, a stream-enterer, if you don’t practice? How can you end suffering if you don’t practice? If you do it in this way, in the right way, the practice will go wherever you are, wherever you be. You will progress everywhere you are, wherever you be. You will be able to adjust yourself wherever you are, wherever you be. 


  31. Once you understand the way of practice to be happy, the way to end your suffering, when you really practice it by yourself in this way, then you can tell your friends. You can even show them the Dhamma in the Internet. You can show the Dhamma on YouTube. There are so many ways nowadays to share the Dhamma, to share the truth, to share the way of practice. 


  32. So you Chinese people, you like to eat delicious food. Wherever you find something to eat, there you will go. But wherever you go, wherever you travel to get your nice food, this is where you will die. But actually, if you have the right view, right understanding and right practice, every corner of this world, you can fix your problems. There will be no problem for you anymore. But if you listen nowadays to the monks, they all will just teach you samadhi, samadhi, samadhi, go in the meditation retreat, samadhi, samadhi, samadhi, but they don’t teach you to find your happiness in practicing the Dhamma, to find your happiness in working. Once you come back from a retreat, or once you come back out of your meditation, you’re still arguing with your friends, you still argue with your family. If you only practice in Samadhi or meditation, you will not be able to eat. 


  33. That’s why the Buddha wanted us to let everything be. Sila (virtue), Samadhi (stillness) and Panna (wisdom): these three things we have to go together in every single present moment. Happiness is for work. Working is for happiness. When you speak, speak with happiness: it’s not that difficult to do. Just closing your eyes will not fix your problems. You will not have any time to eat. In the morning before you go to work and in the evening when you come back home, this is the time where you sit Samadhi. This is the time for you to train meditation. This is the time for you to train your mind and stillness and give it a rest, give it a break. Because the Buddha himself is a descendant of Hinduism. His family background is Hindu. But the Hindus, they can just go to the peacefulness of mind, to the stillness of mind. They could go to the Brahma world when they die. But the Buddha said, you have to take the Noble Eightfold Path. So that in our daily life we can practice the Dhamma and Work at the same time. It’s actually one and the same thing. If you do it this way, you will find happiness. If you emphasize too much or only on meditation, on samadhi, then you will be lazy. You will be somebody that is not willing to take any responsibilities. You will be even more selfish. Like the monks in Thailand, you can go to almost every monastery. They are all lazy. The monasteries are dirty, the living rooms are dirty, the toilets are dirty. it’s not cleaned at all. But look at this monastery and the monastery where we practice. Look at this place. This monastery here is clean. Because what they are doing is letting go in the wrong way. They just wait that the lay people offer them all the requisites, offer them all the good things, and in this way they think “we are just letting go, we are doing nothing, we are completely letting go of everything”. But this is letting go in the wrong way. This is letting go with foolishness. 


  34. But you are not that different. If we are waiting just to get things from the government, to get things from other people, and we don’t find happiness in working, we don’t find our joy in practicing the path, they are not that different like them, we (are) letting go in the wrong way. This word ‘monk’ means you are happy with practicing, you are happy with working. This is what ‘monk’ means. A monk is somebody who find his happiness in being virtuous, in keeping the precepts. You find his happiness in taking the Dhamma as principle, as guideline in your life. This is a monk. Finding the happiness in work: “Mm, this is good”. 


  35. You have to understand the true teachings of the Buddha, the real teachings of the Buddha. You have to understand the religion. Buddhism is about developing the mind and developing the material world together, along with each other. When you return home, please be happy. You know now the way, how to practice to be happy. Luang Por, he wants all of you to be happy. So that you can cancel all your laziness. So that you can cancel all your fights, all your arguments. If you fight and argue with other people, you’re nothing else than becoming a dog, barking and biting each other. Don’t be a dog. You have to be able to stop being a dog. The same when you find some people attractive, some attractive people you look at and you want them, you’re becoming a dog: “Oh, oh, yes, yes, I want them, I want them, I want them.” You become a dog. But a dog can’t stop themselves: you can stop yourself. But in our Western world, in these homes, the dogs, when they come out in the street, they’re fighting each other and they’re barking at each other. In the Western world, they are completely lost and deluded in all this material world and all these things they can get. So they have no human beings as their friends. That’s why we need dogs as our friends. Because we can’t get along with each other. (Luang Por’s laughing, he said, yeah, they are completely deluded. They are so selfish, they are having a big ego. They are just fighting for the rubbish at the end.) Luang Por hopes that you understand the Dhamma he is giving to you, so that you can stop your delusion, so that you can stop, you don’t have a big sense of self, and you can stop having an ego. 


  36. You can see, many years ago you have been attractive, you have been good looking. Look, now the time is passing by. You are no more that good looking anymore. Nobody looks at you anymore. Now you’re really old. And you can see, this is just the process of a body. There is no me, there is no mine, there is no self behind. You are no more this attractive person before. So when Luang Por is talking like this, even the people in all the other countries, they can hear and can listen to the Dhamma of Luang Por because of the technologies. This is a good way to use the technologies in the right way and the proper way. This is really beneficial for everybody. It’s like Covid. Covid went all over the world. But now the Dhamma can also go all over the world. 


  37. If you want to be happy and you want to end your suffering, you have to use the right method to be happy. You have to use the right method to end your suffering. Go in the right way. If you want to find your happiness and end your suffering, when you think you’re going to look for the girls in Pattaya, this is where you will just find trouble. This will not be the end of your suffering. This is not where the happiness is. You want to go to Pattaya, you want to go to Koh Samui, you go in the wrong way. This is the wrong method. You cannot end the suffering in this way. You’re creating more. You cannot find happiness in this way. In this way, you’re just increasing your suffering more and more and more. This is the wrong way. This is the wrong method. Looking for happiness in the sensual pleasures, this is not to be done. So, don’t you have enough suffering by now? Why do you need to add more of this? (Luang Por was just in this moment talking to a Westerner, the one single man.)