TSLKlang

     这是我三个月以来的第一次演讲，当然，不是所有人都会变老，没有胡子和头发的和尚可不容易见老...

因为和尚拥有比较积极正面的态度，所以我时常被邀请去演讲。

回想起最近一场演讲，谈到积极态度能够协助面对生活的苦楚，当然已经有太多证据能够证明这一点，不过今天我要谈一谈如何保持积极正面的态度以面对人生，因为当生命处于低潮，人们劝告说积极一点而我们连这样都做不好时心里的烦闷可想而知。。

我曾经有一个经历，有一次，我尝试从山脚下走路回去山上的寺庙，一直以车代步。这一次的经历真是让我感到意外，实际上是大吃一惊。我几乎认不出这个地方，那山和我一直在车子里面所看的是那么的不一样。我看到从来不曾看到的东西，更加细致色彩更加鲜艳，我停下脚步，发觉整个山又起变化，我看到小花，石头，石头的形状，树干，树皮，那整棵树是那么美，更奇妙的是更加鲜艳的色彩，那颜色更加深，我们和尚经历这样的事情总是会事后观想，到底发生什么事？用科学的角度，人的眼睛的后面有视觉细胞，它需要时间去吸收接触的讯息，一般上，人们总是匆匆忙忙的，一个影像还没来得及被消化另一个又代替了进来，以至于那细节都模糊了，那影像没有时间成型。

当我走路的时候比较缓慢，那在眼睛后面的影像，光线拥有足够的时间让我体验更加完整细致和更加鲜艳的色彩。一般人过生活就好像坐在高速汽车里面，当你慢下来你的五官可以感受更多经历更多，你会觉得人生很美丽，可是一旦你匆匆忙忙一切看起来就好像蜡笔画一样了无生趣。

所以我们来禅修，静坐，从你的生命当中挪出一段时间，让生命慢下来，体验更多感受更多，因为人生是有不好的一面，啊那山不够树木，杂草丛生，应该像日本花园等等，不是的，当你慢下来，你将看到人生积极的一面，美丽的一面。你可以尝试看看你人生其他的东西。

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

和尚不一定常常跟高尚的人物在一起，有时候会去监狱，会面对杀人犯，强奸犯，那些犯了各式各样严重罪行的人。奇妙的是，当你能够慢下来，看到这些人美丽的一面，这些人也开始变。因为我用真诚的态度让他们也看到自己不曾知道的一面，过后如果有机会出狱，这些人都会得到疗愈。