Don't Worry, Be Grumpy

  I often use that unfortunate tale as an example of what happens when we don’t let go.

  Who is stronger, a man or a water buffalo?

  It doesn’t make sense to hold on to a water buffalo when it’s charging. Let it go. The buffalo only runs off a few hundred meters and then stops by itself. Then the farmer can calmly walk after it, take hold of the rope again, and lead it to the fields to graze.

  Too many people hold back what they should let go, and they lose many fingers.

  59. The Case of the Disappearing Harley

  One of the first residents at my monastery was Patrick. He was a spiritual man with no family and no fixed address. He used to travel from one monastery to another, from one spiritual community to the next. He was a temple hopper. Thus it was that he came to stay at my monastery in the early years to help with the hard physical work of building the basic facilities.

  He had no house or savings. The only thing of value that he possessed was a magnificent Harley Davidson motorbike that he was very pleased with. It allowed him to travel around Australia, enjoying the freedom of being without ties to any person or place.

  He wrote to me regarding his experience in a large shopping mall in Sydney. After parking his Harley in the multi-story parking lot, he purchased a few items and returned to his bike. To his shock, the parking bay was empty. Someone had stolen his Harley!

  That precious bike was the only thing of value that he owned. He had saved up so long to buy it. It was the machine that gave him the freedom to roam wherever he will. Now it had been taken by some lowlife. Now he had nothing.

  He’d been listening to Buddhist teachings long enough to know the meaning of attachment. He remembered the Buddha’s advice that:

  All that is mine, beloved and pleasing,

  will one day become separated from me.

  Thus he quickly came to accept his loss, thinking something like: “Oh well. We have to let go of everything sooner or later. No point suffering over what you can’t change. I have had such wonderful times traveling around this vast land with that Harley. Now I hope that it gives such pleasure to its new owner.”

  He was so pleased that the thief had only stolen his motorbike and not his peace of mind. He had successfully passed a hard test in letting go.

  As he was walking away to catch public transport, smiling to himself at his spiritual achievement, he suddenly realized that he was on the wrong floor of the garage!

  When he went down the stairs to the correct level, there was his Harley, smiling at him as it were. Not only had he passed the letting go test, he still had his motorbike. He had won twice over.

  Well done, Patrick.

  60. On the Ledge

  A famous painter had a bad accident on his Harley Davidson. When he woke up in hospital, the surgeon told him the bad news that they had to amputate his hand, the one he used to paint with. The painter was devastated. He had lost the ability to do the one thing he loved most in the world. With it, he had lost his life’s purpose.

  As soon as he was discharged from the hospital, he entered a tall office block in the city, took the elevator to an upper floor, found an empty office, and climbed out on to the ledge. He was going to kill himself.

  As he gazed the long distance down to the ground, he saw an amazing sight. There on the sidewalk was a man with no arms at all, dancing with joy along the street!

  “My God!” he thought to himself, “I’ve only lost one hand, and there’s a guy with no hands at all, not even arms, and he’s dancing! What do I want to kill myself for?”

  He decided to live. He stepped back from the ledge and into the empty office.

  He thought to himself, “I have to find out that man’s secret—how can he be so happy with no hands?”

  He ran to the elevator, quickly reaching the ground floor, and running along the street he found the man. An armless man isn’t hard to find.

  “Thank you! Thank you, sir! You’ve just saved my life. I’m an artist and have lost my painting hand in a motorcycle accident. I was so depressed that I climbed up to the top of that building over there and was about to commit suicide. While standing on the edge, I looked down and saw you, with no arms at all, dancing along the street! Please tell me, how are you still so happy after losing both your arms?”

  The armless man paused for a moment.

  “Actually I wasn’t dancing. I was just trying to scratch my bum.”

  How else does an armless man deal with an itchy bottom?

  61. My Mother’s Shelf

  A couple of years after moving to Australia, I went to visit my mother in London. One of my supporters kindly donated a soft toy kangaroo to give to my mum as a present from Australia.

  My mother loved that gift. She placed it proudly on the shelf in her living room, where she spent most of the time. It would remind her of me after I’d returned to Australia. I was happy too. I’d found a gift that my mother would cherish.

  A few years later, when I visited London again, I bought my mother a soft toy koala bear, to go with the toy kangaroo. She loved that, too, and placed it on her shelf next to the kangaroo.

  The next time I visited, I gave her a soft toy kookaburra, and the time after, a toy platypus. Her shelf was getting crowded with memorabilia from Australia.

  On my fifth visit, I presented her with a big, soft and cuddly toy wombat. She loved that too. But when she tried to put it on her shelf, together with the kangaroo, koala, kookaburra, and platypus, there wasn’t enough space. Things would fall off. Then my mother would try and squeeze them in, and more stuff would fall off.

  “Why don’t you give some of the old stuffed animals away, Mum?” I suggested. “Then there’ll be some space for the new animals.”

  “Nooooo!” she moaned. “They are all too precious.” She spent hours trying to fit everything on her shelf.

  This is called stress. Sometimes you just can’t fit everything into your brain. You try to put one more thing in, and other things fall out, like the animals on my mother’s shelf. Soon the shelf is so overburdened it breaks. For the brain, that’s called a mental breakdown. Once you understand what’s going on, then such suffering is easy to avoid.

  Had my mother given the old soft toy away, to a friend or to a charity, then not only would there be enough space on her shelf for the new presents, but they would have had less competition for her attention and so been enjoyed all the more.

  Make your mind like an empty shelf, with enough space for enjoying the gift that is always new, the present.

  62. Fifty Strokes of the Cat

  Ours is a strict monastery. It takes two years of disciplined training before one can become a monk. I call it “quality control.” Even in the first year of training, the wannabe monk has to keep the precept of eating no solid food from noon until the dawn of the next day.

  One morning, one such postulant came to see me. He was English and in his mid twenties. He told me that he felt very, very guilty about something he had done the day before. He had not been able to sleep the previous night. He had come to me for a confession.

  From beneath a drooping head, too ashamed to keep eye contact, he admitted that, late the previous afternoon, he was so hungry that he’d snuck into the monastery kitchen, made himself a sandwich, and eaten it. He had broken one of his training precepts.

  “Very good,” I told him.

  He glanced up.

  “It is very good that you’re being honest and telling me what you’ve done. Now try to eat more at our 11:00 lunchtime, and if you are still hungry, you can drink some fruit juice or have a honey drink, which are allowable. You may even eat some dark chocolate, that’s okay too. Now you may go.”

  “What? Aren’t you going to punish me?”

  “No, we don’t do punishments in Buddhist monasteries.”

  “That’s not good enough,” he continued. “I know my character. If you don’t give me penance, I’ll just do the same thing again.”

  I was on the spot. Ho
w does one deal with such a person who believes that only punishment can train one to be disciplined? Then an idea came to me.

  The previous day, I had been reading Robert Hughes’ historical novel about early Australia called The Fatal Shore. The book describes the extremely brutal punishments inflicted on convicts using a vicious whip called the “cat o’ nine tails,” or “the cat” for short.

  “Okay,” I told our miscreant postulant, “I’ll give you a punishment, a traditional Australian punisment. I will give you . . . fifty strokes of the cat!”

  The poor boy’s face drained of color. His lips started to quiver (so much for the English stiff upper lip). He was thinking “Oh no! The abbot is going to flog me. That’s not what I meant by a penance.”

  Because he was new to Buddhism, he actually believed he was going to be whipped for stealing a sandwich. Then I explained to him what “fifty strokes of the cat” meant in a Buddhist monastery.

  We had two cats at the time. “Please find one of those cats and stroke it fifty times,” I told him. “Learn some compassion from stroking the cat, and then you might learn how to forgive yourself. That is the secret of discipline.”

  He took his punishment very well.

  So did our cat.

  63. The General with the Best Discipline in the Army

  In the Chinese classic The Art of War, there is a story about the general with the best-disciplined soldiers in the imperial army. He was summoned by the emperor to explain how it is that his soldiers always followed his orders.

  “They always follow my orders, Sire,” he explained, “because I only tell them to do what they already want to do.”

  Why did the soldiers want to get up so early in the morning? Why did they look forward to grueling training sessions? And how was it that they were eager to go into battle, where they might get wounded or even killed?

  The answer is that the general was such a compelling motivator that his soldiers were already convinced before he even gave the orders.

  They wanted to get up early and train hard. They had been motivated by inspiring talks on heroism and patriotism to want to go to battle for the cause. That was the secret of their perfect discipline—they had a charismatic leader who motivated them.

  Punishment rarely leads to discipline. Instead, it teaches people to be smart enough not to get caught. But when you can motivate your son to come home early from a night out so his studies do not suffer, instead of punishing him, then you get discipline.

  64. Girlfriend Power

  The son of one of my friends was staying out late with his girlfriend many nights a week, and his university grades were suffering as a result. Like most boys his age, he would not listen to his parents. So his father, a very smart man, found another way to help his son be more disciplined.

  In the early hours one morning, when his son arrived home with his girlfriend after a night of clubbing, his father was standing outside waiting for them.

  “Come inside,” he motioned.

  His son thought that he was in big trouble, but his dad never even spoke to him. Instead he addressed his son’s girlfriend. “You’ve being dating my son for quite a long time now, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, she replied.

  “I don’t know what your plans are, but who knows, you two may decide to get married some day. Now, I’m sure you wouldn’t want a husband who failed his degree and can’t get a good job. If my son keeps staying out so late, that may very well happen. Has he mentioned that his grades have been falling close to failing since he began going out with you?”

  “No,” she replied, looking sharply at her boyfriend, “I didn’t know.”

  “Just thought I should tell you,” said the father. “Goodnight.” And he left them alone.

  From that night on, the young man’s girlfriend made sure that they always returned home early, and she kept a close watch over his grades, which improved dramatically. He eventually completed his degree, and he now has a good job.

  So if you have an undisciplined son who won’t listen to his parents, try girlfriend power. If you get her on board, you have leverage. Or try enlisting your daughter’s boyfriend to help keep her on the right path.

  65. Twenty Push-Ups Every Morning

  People are really into fitness these days. They spend a lot of their spare time at the gym, or playing sports, to maintain a healthy body. Yet they still have unhealthy emotions. They get angry and depressed too easily.

  Therefore, I have developed and taught a simple exercise regime to develop healthy emotions. It is called “twenty push-ups every morning.”

  After going to the toilet in the morning and brushing your teeth, stand with your feet about fifteen inches apart on a warm, soft mat in front of a mirror. Breathe in and out deeply for three or four breaths to relax yourself. Then raise your hands to the level of your face. Place your index fingers on the corners of your mouth. Then looking in the mirror, push up.

  One!

  Let your mouth return to its usual miserable-looking position for three seconds, then push up again.

  Two!

  Continue for twenty repetitions. Don’t cut the number short!

  Not only will you laugh at yourself every morning, but the muscles around the corners of your mouth will be exercised so effectively that it will be easy to laugh at life and smile much longer than ever.

  All it takes is a bit of training.

  66. Tummy Wisdom

  When I was a boy, being of ample girth was considered a sign of health and carefree happiness. The spiritual exemplar who inspired me in those days with his kindness and social conscience was Friar Tuck from the TV series Robin Hood. He was fat as well as wise and jolly. That was the sort of monk I aspired to emulate.

  Nowadays we’re all supposed to be thin and serious. I started to succumb to concern about the size of my ample tummy when, one evening in my temple in Perth, a Chinese woman came up to me and began rubbing my tummy for good luck! So I did some urgent research.

  I found that experiments have shown that when you are happy, especially when you laugh, the blood vessels in your body expand significantly. But when you are miserable and worried, they become much thinner.

  This explained so much.

  Perhaps you’ve noticed, as I have, that most older people who are fat are jolly and kind, like Santa Claus. I reasoned that this must be because they laugh so easily and often that their blood vessels have expanded as wide as super-highways, and all the bad cholesterol and other ”guck” easily finds a way through. Since miserable fat people have narrow blood vessels, which are easily clogged, they must die sooner, leaving only the happy ones behind.

  So for those of you who are overweight, like this author, make sure you laugh a lot. The effect on your arteries may save your life!

  For example, the famous American comedian George Burns, during an interview on his ninety-something birthday, was asked about his lifestyle: “George, you’re in your late nineties, and still you stay out into the early hours of the morning in nightclubs, drink copious amounts of scotch whiskey, smoke cigars by the box, and eat fatty foods. Aren’t you concerned about your health?”

  “Not at all,” replied George. “My wife was always worried about my health and lifestyle, and that’s why she died many years ago!”

  67. The Origin of Stress

  In 2010, I was invited to give a keynote address at the World Computer Congress in Brisbane. I knew nothing about computers, but such trivial details as “not knowing what I am talking about” didn’t stop me from accepting the gig.

  During my speech, I held up my glass of water and asked my audience, “How heavy is this glass?”

  Before they could answer, I continued, “If I keep on holding my glass like this, after five minutes my arm will ache. After ten minutes, I will be in considerable pain. And after fifteen minutes, I will be in agony and a very stupid monk!

  “So what should I do?

  “Whenever the glass of water starts to feel t
oo heavy for me to hold comfortably, I should put it down for one minute. Having rested my arm for sixty seconds, then I can pick up the glass and carry it again with ease. If you don’t believe me, try it yourself at home!

  “This is the origin of stress at your workplace. It has nothing to do with how much work you have to do, nor how heavy your responsibilities are. It has everything to do with not knowing how to put the work down when it feels too heavy to bear, and rest for a little while, before picking up the burden again.”

  My advice was so well received that it was published in The Australian, the only national daily newspaper in Australia, and migrated from there to the Australian Stock Exchange website.

  If you don’t learn to “put down the burden” and take a rest when you feel stressed, then the quality of your work will decline, your output will get much less, and your stress levels will increase. But if you give yourself a half-hour break in the middle of the day, the thirty minutes that you lose is soon made up with higher-quality work completed in less time. You get, for example, four hours work done in three hours, and it is of good quality. Putting down the glass of water, therefore, is not a waste of precious time but an investment, repaid later through the increased efficiency of your brain.

  My advice later appeared on the Harvard Business School blog. So maybe I do know what I am talking about after all!

  68. Half a Sheet of Paper

  Many years ago, I read the following inspiring story of how a man overcame his anger and lack of self-esteem.

  A widow was presenting the eulogy at her husband’s funeral service. She held up a dog-eared half sheet of paper, explained that her husband had kept it in his wallet since before they were married, and that it had prevented him from getting angry with others or becoming negative about himself.