Bodhi Day Talk by Acharya Susthama

Good morning. It's the 8th of December and we're at Aniida Mandala in Melbourne. And it is Bodhi Day. And this is the second talk in this order retreat. Actually, it's not an order retreat, is it? Is it? So retreat. Retreat. And there are lots of members of the sangha, including order members. And I'm going to try and build on what Dhammavijja talked about yesterday and try and develop it a little bit in my own way. And I think I'll start by Bringing us back to the point of the Buddha seeing the morning star and what he said about that being Mara. And Mara to me though is a little bit too abstract. You think, okay, Mara is a devilish creature or however it appears to you, death, but what does death look like? You know, does he come like the Grim Reaper? So let's, you know, use modern speech. Let's look at Mara like something— and he also said things like lust, desire, but I think for me in terms of what I'm picking up on today's modern difficulties is stress. You know, we live in a society full of stress. That is mara. And what else? Anxiety, worry, anger, you know, there's so much rage on the road. It's becoming more and more common in Watford, people actually stopping and getting out of their cars, having a fist up almost, and you think, "Oh, something's going on there." And fear. A lot of people too scared to do things. So I think, um, when we think about enlightenment and what the Buddha went through on the night he was assailed with Mara, it's something that I think all of us can achieve, actually. So I'm very lucky because My first stop in the Buddhist path was Pure Land, and I have a pretty bold and— not obnoxious in a bad way, but you know, he's a pretty audacious teacher. And so I can say that, you know, I'm very foolish, but I think I'm also enlightened. And I think actually all of us can be enlightened. I don't think it's that difficult. And I think actually the Buddha in, you know, a lot of the sutras in the Majjhima Nikāya, in the Middle Length Sutras, you know, when we studied it a long time ago, it did seem like every other person on every other page was getting enlightened. So I don't think it's as difficult to achieve as we like to make it out to be. So happy enlightenment! And I'll tell you, the Buddha to me is the first best self-guru, self-help guru, ever. So, because he saw things for what they were, so he was able to have conversations with Mara, like Dharma Vidya said. Mara was always walking behind him, right behind his shoulder. And we could do that too, if we could take our stress, talk to the stress, just like, you know, in the Buddha's time it was death, you know, "Why don't you die, Buddha?" "Not today, I've got too much to do." Stress could be like that. "Come on, let's feel stress." "Not yet, I've got too much to do." You know, worry, "Come on, let's worry." "No, thank you, I've got too much to do." Fear, "No, no, yes, I've got fear, but I've got too much to do." So Susan Jeffers, you know, the author of "Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway," It's that, you know, take yourself just one step out of it, look at it for what it is. We don't have to pretend like Mara's not there, but you live with it. And the Buddha, you know, he was full of guilt full of all sorts of feelings about losing his mother at childbirth at the time of enlightenment. It didn't just go away. He lived with it. And I think this is his message is we can learn to live with whatever issues and whatever difficulties we have now. But, you know, my mom died when I was 10. I still miss her. I've learned to live with it. It doesn't go away, it doesn't make it any easier, but I've learned that, you know, but without her death, I wouldn't be here now. Because I got to a point in my life where you could say that if Buddhism is about following the middle path, I was at one end of the extreme before I came across Buddhism. And that extreme was about my guilt, and because I felt guilty all the time because I couldn't save my mother at the time of her death. She was— she died in front of me, and I was 10. And without me knowing that, you know, during my adolescence, during my years as a young adult, everything I did was just to try and avoid feeling so guilty. So I could never enter into a relationship without feeling bad about something, and I didn't even know, you know, all of this was playing out in my life until I got to a point where I just felt like such a failure. I felt like I didn't know how to carry on. And I just thought, okay, well, so I was, what, 27, and my dad died, and I thought, I made a mess of that relationship. And that was, you know, how I saw things. Every relationship I went to, I made a mess. I just couldn't figure out how to be in a relationship and make it work. So, you know, I suddenly, you know, felt myself feeling all my friends around me everywhere, you know. I just felt like everyone was settling down with a partner, everyone was ready to start having a family, but I wasn't. I wasn't ready. And I had lots of reasons for not wanting a family that were positive. It wasn't negative, it was all very positive. I loved what I was doing. I was traveling around and I kept, you know, learning new things, new cultures, new languages, and I didn't want to stop that. And I didn't want children because I thought the world was overpopulated and I thought, you know, we were just going to bring more problems with a bigger population. So I had lots of really good reasons why I wanted to be single, but you know, the main reason was every time I got into a relationship I got to a point where either I had done something really wrong or they had done something really wrong and I couldn't talk about it and I felt bad and then I was worried that, you know, we'd end up in this awful argument and I thought, "Better leave before that point." And so I was very good at leaving before, you know, I started looking like a demon of some sort. So I never saw that, you know, I could be that. I wasn't that sort of person. I just felt, "Oh, let's just move to a different country because, you know, I've learned enough about this culture." So, you know, and that just drove me further and further into misery. And so I think the Buddha's message is very much, "Live with it, but don't let those feelings drive you." You know, let it walk behind you, let it be there, look at it for what it is, but have a different incentive for doing something, have a different motivation. See that you can detach yourself from those feelings of anxiety, or those feelings of guilt, or whatever it is. Don't let those be your god, because they're not. They'll change. So these days, I don't think a lot of people want to be enlightened, actually. What they're looking for instead, what we're all looking for, I suppose, is happiness. And so everyone just wants to feel happy. And what is that? Why? And I can understand, you know, we need to feel satisfied with our lives. We need to feel a certain amount of contentment, because if not, I think we'll just carry on being driven by this unconscious force. And to what end? Where does that leave us, and where does that leave our relationships with close ones, with people that we come across, with people that we work with, and with the planet as a place where we want it to carry on? But if we carry on just letting this destructive force drive us forward, then no one will be happy. So it's very easy, you know, the Buddha is saying you can be happy actually. Satisfied in the way that he was because in the mudra, I think it's very good, where he's got one hand touching the earth, one hand holding his palm upwards so he could hold anything, and he is looking out there, and it is facing, facing others. He's, you know, he's not so preoccupied with himself, but It's not— I suppose we now come to think of it as self-power and other power, but I think, you know, he's very good at just getting rid of all our attachments to wanting it to be this way or that way. It's all me or it's not all me, and I think the middle path, middle way, is a very good way of explaining it. What he's trying to actually achieve and what he's trying to, you know, sort of bring to us as our guide. So I do feel like I've gone from an extreme edge more into the middle. And when I first came across Buddhism, and I didn't know anything about Buddhism, but I read about, you know, You know, there is one teaching about if you're on a road and you're on the left, then you know you need to come to the right. If you're on the right, you need to come to the left. So not everyone is going to be on the same edge of the extreme, but you know, my difficulty is, well, that sounds so good, but how do you know when you're in the middle? How do you know that, you know, you've not just gone over to the other extreme? So, and then in, I don't know which book it is, but in one of David Brazier's books, The Middle Way is also very difficult. It talks about if you're going to help someone who's not well, you can't just help them halfway. You can't just get to the Middle Way and think, "Okay, I've done my middle bit," and you have to either not help them or help them. But how do you know when you've helped them? So there's something, you know, even I question, you know, okay, so I can understand, you know, from a therapist's point of view, when you help someone, they take whatever their problem is and they present it to you. I can understand this is what the Buddha is trying to do. Take your stress, take your worry, talk about it, get it off your chest, and see what it is. Look at it. And in that, you know, there is a— you know, just in the way that I'm using my gesture— there is an offering. There's an offering that we are giving to someone. And once you get it off your chest and it's out there, it then looks a lot different and it feels a lot different. And so in this relationship, we find some clarity, a way of actually stepping back, and then a way of Maybe seeing it held in a different way so that we can then react to the situation in a new way. So it's sort of like we have to keep trying different things in order to find where the middle path is, where the middle way is. Is it really like this? If we then take it and we try something else, is that better or worse? So it's refreshing to know that we don't have to get it right all the time, but we have to try something different. So the Buddha, he was an amazing person in that he taught so many different ways of doing things. I remember talking to someone who who lived at the Buddhist House, and they were telling me why they liked Buddhism and why they didn't like Christianity. And it was something, you know, if I just put it in a nutshell, Christianity tells you what to believe in, and Buddhism tells you how to do it. I thought, "Ah, yeah, I like that." There's not just one way, you know, there's lots of different ways, and so He's very much about finding skillful means, and there usually is a skillful way of doing something, skillful ways of reacting to things as they come into our lives. So I suppose the next step on his journey was to take it out and to find people to teach. And again, you know, I think the Majjhima Nikāya is a good source because it just shows and teaches us all about the culture that he grew up in and how these jhāna states, the different meditations, they're not Buddhist actually. They were around at the time and everyone, most people who was probably feeling guilty and wanted to torture themselves doing ascetic practices would do. So everyone, you know, most people were doing, not just the Buddha but other people of different traditions. But what the Buddha taught that is very distinctively Buddhist is the Four Noble Truths. And again, you know, I don't know how I came to Amida, but I'm very fortunate that I did because we have a completely different interpretation from the traditional orthodox view. View, and so different. And I guess, yes, lucky me. How difficult, you know, if you try and live the Four Noble Truths. I did actually think when I first came across Buddhism that it wouldn't it be so nice just to not crave anymore. You know, I hated craving, I hated feeling like I wanted something and if I could just snip that off, yeah, it would be so easy. But yeah, it's not realistic. And there's a lot about, you know, the story about the Buddha and when he was born and how he was born and how he grew up in a palace and sheltered from all the ills of the world. And, you know, even now, I am being a mother of two now and seeing all the different ways they can suffer as a child. I'm pretty sure Siddhartha Gautama had a lot of tantrums and probably felt lots of suffering, afflictions, you know, as he was growing up, even within the palace walls where he was given everything so he wouldn't suffer. It's impossible, you know, and we live in You know, a modern age with technology, you know, so many wonderful things to keep us going and keep us distracted from our own suffering, but still we can't avoid getting what we don't want and not getting what we want, and then all the big things in life like loss and death and illness. And so, yeah, I think it's good to question, did that really happen? Is that story really accurate? So again, you know, a blessing from my teacher, I can actually question these things and challenge them, not just, you know, accept everything just because it's there and it says it's— that's how it was, and yeah, it's refreshing. So, the First Noble Truth, and again, you know, you can present it as, "These are the Four Noble Truths," or, "These are truths for noble ones." And this is, I think, another message that comes across clearly in the Buddha's teachings and sutras, is is that he's always wanting to level people in society. He wants to bring down the people who are at the top of the hierarchy, and he wants to bring up the people at the bottom. So what does he do one time when there's a group of men from a village and they all want to join the Buddhist Sangha, and the Buddha initiates the barber first, the one lowest of all the ranks. And so then the barber, who is really nobody, becomes the most senior out of this group, and it changes their power over each other. And that's really hard to swallow if you're used to being, you know, head honcho, and then all of a sudden You know, the person who washes your feet, you know, is someone you have to bow down to. So he's very good at finding skillful ways to level out people, making people, you know, actually learn a little bit of humility, and to give someone who's never had any respect at all, you know, all of a sudden having to accept it. And that's something that I think is also a very important message is it's not just about not doing something. You know, I think I can understand how today's society is actually making more work for everyone, and we're busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. But I don't think the Buddha is saying don't do anything. One of the things that we're not very good at And this is also something that, as a mother, I've learned is how to just receive and accept everything. Because once you— here comes a good example— once your child comes and they want to give you something, if you say, "No, no, no," it leaves a bit of— Can you sit on the floor over there, please? Please? Sit on me. Okay, just for a second or two, and then you can sit over there with Tama and Satya. There's a nice lap over there. They— it leaves a little bit of a rejection, and the last thing they want is to feel rejected, because what they want is to give you themselves. It's their way of loving you. Am I coming outside? Yes, go outside. So it's that balance of Accepting them and everything that they give you and receiving, even if that's not what we want. But it's something very hard. So if we can learn to receive and, you know, and really receive, not just, you know, it's very hard. Because it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't always feel good, it doesn't always feel nice, but it would do something completely different for the other person that we have no way of knowing. But it makes them feel loved, makes them feel worthy. That a part of them was actually received by you. So in our practice we do this all the time, but the person who's receiving us as we are is Amida, of course. And not just Amida, I need to sort of backtrack a little bit because in the Buddha's teachings of skillful means, he put in so many stories, so many interesting bodhisattvas and gods and devas in place to help us. And the ones that, you know, are here to help us still to this day are Amida and Kuan Yin and Tai Chi Chi. So there's a picture over there which is really good because— so in most Buddhist icons and pictures and statues, the images of someone sitting, and it does look like, okay, it's really about sitting. But in Amida, it's about standing and doing something, walking, being ready to go somewhere. They're not sitting, they're not static, it's not about doing nothing, it's very much about, let's take a step in this world and And he's not alone. He's with Kwan Im. So Kwan Im is also the bodhisattva who hears the cries of the world. So she receives us and all our sufferings, all our sorrows, and she gives back compassion. So if we can do that, if we can try and emulate that, That, I think, would be a great step in just making everyone happier or more enlightened. Because there is a process then. There's a process of us being able to take our issue off our chest and to give it to someone and have it received and then have that fellow feeling, that compassion come back to us so that we're not alone. She's usually holding a baby and pouring it, you know, it's very busy, multitasking, you know, she's probably already got a whole row of people set up so she knows who she's gonna see next. And even she can't do it alone, you know, there's a great story that Dharmavidya came back from one of the centres in France with, and they said it in French, so it was all with the French, you know, "Oh la la!" You know, when Kwan Im looks back into the the world, and she sees more people, you know, creating so much suffering for themselves. And she just finished saving about a million, and she just sees them, you know, right back at it again, and she's just like, "Oh no!" So, poor Kwan Yin, right? And then, you know, the story goes on to, she's so shattered, you know, absolutely shattered. That just You know, it's the straw on the camel's back and it just breaks her into pieces. So, you know, she's now completely destroyed and so Amida sees this and Amida puts her back together and in each hand he puts an eye of wisdom so that she can actually see things a little bit better. And I think in some depictions of Kuan Yin there's Amida on her forehead. Another reminder of not being alone, not having to do things by yourself. And this is, you know, again, it's self-power and other power coming together to make a middle path. We do things, we have to do things, but is it really us? You know, we're not really alone in this world, and sometimes it feels like it's too much us, and so at that point I think if we can recognize that, then reach out, be open to the other. If I think there's too much other, and this is also I think a trap for some Pure Land Buddhists, that, you know, it's all other and so then what do we do? And it can be a kind of, yeah, a big trap that you just end up doing nothing even though you can see very clearly that there's there's things that we could do, but if there's too much emphasis on have faith, do nothing? I don't know, it just, that's not the middle path either. So I think, you know, when the two come together, this is the nice thing, because I think we feel it. You feel that a connection's been made. It's not just us, it's not just the other, it just feels, yeah, it's It's cooperation, a relationship that's met. And then we have Tai Chi Chi on the other side of Amida. Tai Chi Chi is the bodhisattva of wisdom power or creative energy. And there's a lovely, you know, it's very hard to find information about Tai Chi Chi. Tai Chi Chi is not as popular. Popular as Kuan Yin. And the, you know, I, in my name there's a little bit of Stamma, which is Stamma prop— oh, I forget how it goes now— Maha Stamma Prapta. And so I, you know, I have a kind of interest in trying to find more information about Tai Chi Chi, but it's very hard. And, but the one story that I found that I thought, "Oh, it's tai chi chi!" It's a lovely story, and it's about, like, a village in a barren place. So you can imagine in a place, say, up in the mountains, and they have to walk quite a distance to get water. It's the responsibility of a couple of people to go and fetch water, and they go, you know, carrying their buckets, and they go and they fetch water. And they get the water and then they carry it all the way back. And, you know, where would we be without water? So water is very precious. It's an important source. For their well-being and their own life. And one of them though, one of them is not very good at this. And it's, you know, it is tricky, but the other one is very competent and, you know, is very strong and is able to do it and never spills a drop and carries it back and there's enough to go around. Thank goodness, and the other one, you know, is very weak and trips and falls, breaks the bucket. Not, you know, so that it's broken, but so that, you know, it just splits a little bit, so there's a little crack, and so along the way it drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and gets to the village and, you know, there's only half— it's only half full. So the people are a bit, you know, despairing of this 'Poor person because they can't do their job. They're leaving a trail of water behind and what a waste. What a waste. How come they can't replace that person and get someone else who's more capable of doing it?' But, you know, and even the person feels bad, goes and talks to the chief and says, you know, 'It's really, really hard. I can't do it. I'm not the right person. Please find someone else.' No, no, that person has to do it. Okay, no choice. You know, that's that person's role. They're stuck in a way. They feel like they're in prison, and the other one, you know, is also very judgmental, but because, you know, he can probably carry both sets of buckets and not spill a drop. But anyway, they carry on doing this. And everyone accepts that, you know, they rely on the person who's very good at it, and they just forget about the other one. And then gradually over time, you know, it gets to the point where the other weaker, poorer one, you know, is ready to give up. In tears goes to the chief and says, "Listen, I can't do this anymore. Please, you know, get someone else." And probably, you know, in modern terms, like, "Forget it, I've had enough, you do it! You can probably do it much better than me, I've had enough, I'm going," and then goes to the corner and sulks. And then the chief says, "Well, 'Look, look at, you know, all the beauty that you've brought. You know, look at all the flowers that have grown in the place where you've dripped the water every time you've traveled. Look at all the wonderful things that have grown, you know, because of you.' And it was the first time they could see that, and it just transformed everything. So Tai Chi Chi is like that, and we need both. We need someone to help us see that, you know, it's like Shinran says, "You turn rubble into gold." And, you know, there's a lot about transformation. The lotus in the mud. You can't have a beautiful lotus without the mud. Or the grit in the oyster shell. You never get a pearl if not for the grit. And other things, you know, because I think we like to identify with things. Some of us identify with being that oyster, you know, all clammed up and with our grit inside, and, you know, and others identify more with, you know, just working in really muddy, polluted, contaminated, you know, sticky, dirty, awful situations, but, you know, is able to transform into something beautiful like a lotus flower, and others are more like a snake, you know, with a poisonous venom, but if used correctly, can be an amazing, amazing healer. So Tai Chi teaches us that we can transform all those negative and unwanted qualities into something actually so beautiful, so important, and so wonderful. And then we have Amida. Amida, who is the main person, the main Buddha, who is the savior. And The image that goes with the mīdha is of the sun setting in the west. And it, of course, goes down in the evening, and when the sun goes down, then it's night, and that's when we go to sleep. And it's, you know, it's very close to going towards our death. So it's very much about seeing that at the horizon there's death. And every night as we go to bed, you know, sleep is kind of similar to death. And we know more about sleep these days as well. There's a neuroscientist that's written a book, Why Sleep Matters, and he did research in, the area of dementia. So at first he wanted to understand which part of the brain was active for different types of dementia. During the day, the activity that showed up in all the different cases of dementia was the same. He didn't see any different pattern. And so, um, Eventually, you know, what struck him was, why doesn't he try seeing what brain activity occurs at night? And then when he did that, he saw that it's so different in all the different cases of dementia, which led him to ask, why do we sleep anyway? Why does sleep matter? So then he left that project and he just went into looking at why do we need to sleep, you know. And wouldn't it be great if somehow we could— I don't think it's possible— but wouldn't it be great if we could look at why do we die, what happens when we die. And you know, there's so many theories around, but no one's actually done any kind of scientific research in this area, and I don't know if it's possible. But what he found was really important to everyone's well-being, because this is, you know, I think a lot of us already intuitively know that this is when the body has a chance to restore itself. This is a chance when, you know, if we can allow ourselves to relax and sleep, then we, the body, you know, just repairs, heals, gets rid of a lot of our bad feelings that we had. The day before, or, you know, when you sleep on something that's been an issue, you know, a good night's sleep can change everything. So sleep is so important. And, you know, it just sort of leads that, you know, sort of tantalizing question, "Well, what about death?" Death isn't a failure, but what, you know, how important is it? We don't know, we'll never know, but it's that, yeah, it's that sense of, you know, what I know is that a good death is really important because it can actually leave a great impact on those people who witness it, and a bad death can be terrible. It can have the opposite, equally traumatic experience for people, but that can actually, you know, change a person's life. So whether they witness a good death or a bad death, and then how you yourself die, you know, can probably have an important and significant impact in your afterlife. So sleep, and Amida is, you know, just pointing at one day we will die, one day we will enter into that sleep, where maybe things will get so repaired and so wonderful that we turn into Buddhas and enter into Nirvana, or maybe come back as Bodhisattvas to help save other beings. Who knows? Who knows? And then, you know, the other wonderful image that comes to comes to mind when I think of the trio and the Buddha is— and this is what we usually recreate during the ordination ceremony— is the White Path. And I think I might need your help in correcting me if I'm wrong, but Tao Tzu had a vision of this. Now he was a Taoist, Chinese Taoist monk, and was then Shandao's teacher. And Shandao was the 6th century in China, so Daozuo was a little bit before Shandao. And he had a spontaneous vision of Amida coming to him. And so what I understand is that he, as a Daoist, went to the Daoist temples and looked at all the texts about you know, this kind of vision, because he wanted to know, you know, does it fit in anywhere? And then eventually he came across it in Buddhism. And so then he started painting and creating lots of statues and pictures of Amida coming, you know. Coming for you. And then of course the Buddha is— so the story is of a traveller like you and me, and the traveller is full of— well, actually, let's just call it, you know, an innocent traveller, and lives in this world. And in the picture, in this world, there's thieves, robbers, lots of animals who are angry and chasing him. And then the Buddha is also there, and the Buddha is pointing out, you know, "Go that way." So he's very good at, you know, directing people and telling them, you know, saying, "That's the way." And Amitābha is at the other end of the path saying, "Come this way," and it's all smiles, and the traveller, you know, has no choice but to start going down a very, very thin white path. And it's probably wider, but in the picture it's thin because on one side you have the— it's like a river of water of greed, and the other side is of anger. And I kind of like that they're outside of the traveller. I like that every now and then the water's lapping over, every now and then greed comes, every now and then anger comes. It's nice to actually— again, you know, it's outside of us, it's separate, we can see it, we can live with it, there it is, and there's the white path. So again, you know, we don't have to get swept away by it. We can come over, we can see it for what it is, but we know that if we just carry on the path, then we will reach the Pure Land. And, um, yeah. As a mother, I chose a kind of parenting style which is known as attachment theory, attachment parenting. I'm not, you know, sort of into attachment parenting, but in terms of how we sleep, it's just been the easiest thing for us for Dory and Selena to sleep in the bed with us, because otherwise it just takes too long and it's too much hassle in the night. And I read one thing about it and how, you know, we as the parents are like the two sides of a riverbank and the child is in the middle, so that they're sort of like in the middle of the river. And in Buddhism they say that I'm not sure, this might just be from Dharmavid. If you go into the middle of the river and are able to let go of the sides, then you'll go a lot faster. So you can actually trust the Dharma and go right into the middle, let yourself be carried along, then you'll have a swifter ride. So I kind of like that analogy, and I kind of see— so we have Kuan Yin on the one hand and on the one side of the bank, and Tai Chi Chi on the other, and then Amida, you know, is carrying us as the boat, you know, going forth. So it's a nice sort of image to help us see that, yes, this is how we can live with all of our grief, all of our anxiety, all of our stress, anxieties, worries, and how we could then just go forth. And so to recreate all of this, you know, is very much in keeping with a Buddhist tradition. And not just that, but, you know, like Dharmavijja said, Pure Land isn't something that came later, it's just another skillful means in which people can actually understand and practice and find a way to practice Buddhism because Buddhism, it can't just be for a monastic community. And then when the Buddha started, you know, teaching the Four Noble Truths, it wasn't just for a certain class of people or a certain type of style. It was, you know, very clear that he wanted a community that had lay people, men and women, families, and a community of celibate men and a community of celibate women. Woman. And you could fit into any one of these and still practice Buddhism, but in a different way, in a different style. So we don't all have to do things exactly the same way as, you know, as this, that, or the other. It's very— this is where I think it can be very hard, because then, you know, I think we like to know, "Is this the right way? Am I doing it okay?" You know, is this Is this the best one for me? And is this the one that is accepted? And, you know, if sort of a regulatory Buddhist body came, would they shut us down because we're not doing it according to a certain way? So there is, you know, I don't know if we're doing it right, but what would the Buddha say if he came and saw us now? But we have to, you know. We have to be able to find a support in our lives to practice in the way that fits our circumstances. And I think the Buddha was very clear in saying, "Yes, you know, be lay and be a Buddhist, be a monk and be a Buddhist, be a nun and be a Buddhist, and there are different styles, but there's room for everyone, and there has to be room for everyone." If not, it's sort of the equivalent of the Kingdom of Heaven. If any one person is excluded, then it's not Heaven. And the Pure Land, I think, is very much about being indiscriminate. And we can judge though, you know, I don't think it's wrong to judge, but I think we also need to be judging in a way that we don't reject. I think it has to be judging with that acceptance. We know what's, you know, we know what's right, we know what's important, we know when it's wrong, we know when we should feel shameful, but there has to also be that acceptance. And so, you know, and this again, it's the middle way. We're only human. We come into this world with our own personal baggage. We take it onto the great Amitabha boat and we can judge, we can, you know, look around and we know, you know, what smells bad and we know what smells good and that's okay. And Namida accepts it that, you know, this is what we have to offer and what we offer is received and we carry on forward in that spirit. And it's, yeah, as again, you know, in mothering, you know, I've learned that being a soft mother is the best way for me because I, you know, I remember reading at a children's centre, if you carry on saying no and criticising your child or just stopping them from being curious, they'll then take it as, that's how you are. You start condemning things, you start to pull back and to censor things or to stop being curious. What I think Ameed and Kuan Yin and Tai Chi Chi are sort of, you know, sort of directing us toward is to how to be curious, how to learn, how to embrace everything that, you know, is a bit odd. Oh, and just, you know, have a childlike curiosity to find out more rather than to just say, "No, thank you," you know, in a kind of snobbish way. And the Buddha, you know, again, if we look at all the wonderful stories and teachings from the Buddha and other Buddhist teachers, it's all filled with skillful means. It's very much about being skillful in this life and finding how to how to do things wrong but recover and try something else. You know, it's very much about falling down and getting back up again so that you can try something different, something new. And I suppose I'll finish with one of my favourite books at the moment is called Wow! Said the Owl. I don't know if you've heard of it. It's so nice. I read it and I thought, "Oh yeah, this sort of epitomises everything in Fjordland." And it's about this little owl, and the owl decides to take a long nap during the day so that they can be awake during the day. And so this little owl was very curious to know what happened during the day, so she slept during the night and then she woke up just before dawn and she goes, 'Wow!' when she saw the morning star and the pink horizon. And then again, you know, you turn the page and it goes, 'Wow!' when she saw the blue sky and the white clouds. And I think if the writer wrote it today, the next page would be, 'Wow!' when the owl saw the snow. You know, the white snow. Snow and the sort of the glitter that you see on snow sometimes. And you turn the page, "Wow!" said the owl when she saw that the leaves on her tree were green and not, you know, a dark colour. And then, turn the page, "Wow!" said the owl. So it doesn't stop this "wow!" you know. Wow! And the sky was turning grey grey and it was just— but the sun was still shining and then you turn the page and there was the most beautiful rainbow, you know, the full rainbow with all the rainbow colours and of course, you know, it's wow! When she saw all those colours and then again, you know, wow! When she saw the sun setting. And then she was so, so excited about all the different colours that she had seen in that one day that she wasn't tired at all to go to bed, so she stayed up. And, you know, owls, they live at night, so, you know, you wouldn't think that the nighttime would be spectacular, but she goes, "Wow!" when she saw the dazzling stars. So they looked different to her. You know, they weren't the same stars as the ones that were there before. They were different. And so, waah! I, you know, I'm not new to you and you're not new to me, but waah! You are so different. So I must have changed. No, I'm gonna need a big piece.