on a few experiences over the last week or 2 weeks

sometimes people have called me or I've had to talk to them

because life can sometimes be quite depressing,

things don't really go the way they should.

Or there's problems in your life,

and people keep asking me what's the purpose of all this?

What the heck is this life all about?

Can you please give me sort of

great overview, the big plan,

so I know what the heck I'm doing all this for,

and why these things happen to me?

So this evening I'm going to talk about the

very simple subject of "The meaning of life." [chuckles]

Or rather than that,

because even that subject

is like becomes theoretical,

it becomes like some sort of idea,

so that is not going to be the slant

which I'm going to give to this talk.

The slant I'm going to give is

not finding the meaning of life

but putting the meaning into your life.

A totally different idea.

The meaning of life is describing to you some theory,

some religious view or spiritual view just telling you

what to believe or how to look at life.

But no, I'm telling you

how you put meaning into your life.

Because if you don't put meaning into your life,

you'll find that life does become quite meaningless.

And you just wonder what's this all about

what are you doing this for,

there's nothing which can really give any drive,

any passion in your life,

and I say this as a monk, because I'm a very passionate monk. [chuckles]

The compassionate one at least,

but you know I really put a lot of energy into whatever I do.

That is for me what passion is because

you understand that

how to put something really important into your life,

some meaning into your life.

And I found out that most people in this life,

who they do get depressed, who do sort of get

negative, it is because

they haven't learned

how to put meaning, the real meaning,

the proper meaning into life.

Yeah, sure that people actually put a lot of energy

and struggle in their life just to getting

on in this world, to succeed

and the trouble is that we don't know really what success is.

When you were a kid, at school,

you think success is getting your grades at school,

or in exams or whatever.

And look, I mean that,

you should all know by now,

because how many of you did really well at school

and we can still be happy and find meaning in life?

Otherwise if you really have to just to be

the A-grade student, if they are the only ones

who have meaning in life, you might as well commit suicide

after grade 12 if you don't get to university which is a stupid idea.

But you find out that,

that is not real meaning in life.

So you find out, most people they find out,

and they try it, and

they assume that other people

know what the meaning of life is.

And they just follow other people like sheep,

and because they follow other people like sheep,

yeah, you do work hard at school

because that's what your parents and

teachers tell you to do.

And think, if I do this right then I'll

find some meaning in life, I'll find happiness.

And then afterwards you go to work and you think

you can find meaning in just your bank balance

or your possessions or whatever else which you

start to attain life, and then

you start questioning that,

that doesn't really give you

what everyone promised you.

Certainly that was my life, you know, going to school,

I did really work, I did work hard, so I got

this great degree from Cambridge University.

I mean that was just a big downer afterwards.

Is this it?

You know, all this which I was promised,

all that hard work which I did to getting a big degree

from a big university?

So what?

One of the reasons I became a monk,

one of the reasons I never went further in

academic career

is because you could see at universities

like Cambridge where you socialised with

the lecturers and with the professors and with the dons.

Look some of those people have Nobel prizes.

I mean, these were the top, the elite of academia.

You talk with them and just realised that these people haven't got it together.

Yeah, they were brilliant in their field but

they were stupid in life.

You know just, I'm rambling on here,

but one of the people which we met here,

with Dennis, our president, Roger Penrose came

into town some years ago and he's

Mr. Black Hole.

He's the guy who discovered black holes.

So Roger Penrose, one of the greatest physicists of our age,

probably up there with Stephen Hawkins.

And he came and Dennis our president,

so we went to have dinner with him.

And, cause I'm well connected with the physicists over here.

It's actually, it's really amazing,

this dinner, all the other people there,

they were sort of from, they were NASA, they were

professor of Physics from all over the place,

and I was only, sort of, the Buddhist monk [laughter]

or anyone from religion which actually shows

just how Buddhism and even just elite Physics,

we can actually melt together.

But you even look at this person who was so brilliant in his field

but you couldn't have a conversation with him.

And do you remember this Dennis?

We were all just talking with each other,

even I was just chatting about all sorts of stuff

with these people from NASA

and he was actually standing by himself,

no one was talking with him.

I was wondering that he is brilliant in front of the lecture theatre, apparently,

he's brilliant, you know, on a piece of paper

but he hasn't got his life together.

It was meeting people like that, I thought,

that's not the meaning in life, becoming a great academic.

It's not the meaning in life becoming really rich people.

Also at Cambridge, you know one of other people I knew,

he was real Lord, he was an Earl.

That's really great going around with a Lord, I mean a real Lord, an Earl.

An Earl or a Viscount? I forget what. But he was a pain in the butt.

Why do you want to have these honours for if you don't just,

a hopeless person to be around.

So, you know, for me, I ticked off boxes early on in life.

This was not where I was going to find my meaning in life.

And it was actually good, ticking off those boxes early.

You know, it's just fame, sort of, being a great academic,

or being, sort of, it was also these great sports people.

There's a college I was at, Emmanuel,

it was at that time, it was like a sporting college

many top sports people went there.

And one of the people I befriended over there

was a guy called Majid Khan, he was an international

cricketer, played for Pakistan and now I think he's

an international umpire.

I went to college with this guy.

Even at that time, you know, he was playing for Pakistan

even though he was in college.

And again, even though he was an elite sportsman,

he was actually more, he had his act together.

He's a lot of fun to be with but still

there was something missing there.

And then later on as you become a monk, you get

into all echelons of society as a monk.

The doors are opened to me which will be closed to all of you guys.

I can go into autopsies and see bodies being cut up.

You know, and that's really fascinating there.

I really recommend it, if you were looking

for something to do over Christmas period. [laughter]

We also actually go and meet these sort of, the top notch people,

the very wealthy people.

I think, I'm pretty sure that when I went to this dinner over

in Canberra once, I going into the toilet,

I didn't recognise him at the time but seen pictures afterwards,

it was Lachlan Murdoch.

I wished I had taken a donation envelope with me for

the Bangladesh orphanage.

That's Rupert Murdoch's son, you meet all these

wealthy people, presidents and stuff.

But you think, is that really what life is all about?

And it's not, there's something else there.

So when you look for meaning in life or when

you put meaning in life, make sure that what you're

really developing in your life is something

which really does have meaning.

And to me, just power, fame, wealth,

I've ticked off those boxes a long time ago,

and that has no real meaning,

it has no real satisfaction in the end for you.

Now to give you a story about that,

there are so many stories about just the, what you might call the

disillusionment which comes when you get wealth.

There's so many stories about that.

The story which I mentioned a few days ago, I think,

I'm not quite sure where I said this or what I've said

somebody sent me an email about this couple in the UK who won the lottery.

They got instant money, about 40 million GBP.

So they bought this huge mansion, one year later they sold that mansion.

The reason they sold that mansion was they couldn't find their kids.

It was just too big.

So there they were in this dream mansion,

just what sometimes, you'd drool over,

you see maybe in the TV or you see in the magazines

or you may go past if you go driving down Peppermint Grove.

You'd think - wow wouldn't it be amazing living

in a huge place like that with manicured gardens,

swimming pools, and with people to serve you whatever you needed.

But then, you think about what happens to a person in there.

And this was someone who'd been there and done that,

because the house had so many rooms,

they could never find their kids.

Almost had to send a search party out to see which room they were in.

And because of that, they realised that something was terribly, terribly missing in their life.

Family, relationships, a bit of love.

I've seen that many times.

Another time, this, talking about big mansions,

we went to a blessing ceremony in this big mansion

in Shelley by the river, one of these very huge ones.

When I went in there, was it a Thai or Chinese lady, I forget now.

But anyway we went in there to do the blessing ceremony

for her new house, she just moved in, she wanted the monks to go in.

That was the time when I just come all the way from Serpentine from the monastery to

Shelley,

One of the first things I did, I said,

"Can I use your toilet?"

And this is no joke, she had to draw me a map

of how to get to the toilet in her house. [laughs]

It's ridiculous.

But then afterwards when we were chatting together, after doing the ceremony,

I said, "How many people live here?"

She said, "Only me."

And that was, that wasn't funny, that really hurt me

cause you know, you have empathy for people.

You know, these are the people you care about.

And when she said, "Only me", you could see just the pain in that expression.

There was a woman filthy rich staying in a huge mansion,

all alone.

I asked her, "Why didn't anyone else stay with you?"