They were looking in the, the library of talks, either on the internet or in the library for

a talk to help one of their friends with depression. And even though I thought I'd talked about

that subject before, maybe I haven't devoted a whole talk to that subject. So for the sake

of people now and in the future, this evening's talk will be on the Buddhist attitude towards

depression.

It is a worthwhile topic because as everybody knows that depression is one of the great

diseases in our modern world. It causes a great deal of suffering and many of us will

meet the depression either personally or one of our loved ones in the course of our life.

And it's also well known that the Buddhist attitudes are very effective in countering

the problems of depression.

You only need to mention that our former premier Geoff Gallop when he resigned because of depression

at the height of his political fame and ability, he actually came to see me and he credits

Buddhist teachings and eastern philosophy as getting him through his depression.

And so that you know we do have the goods. So what are those goods which actually heal

and help with peoples' depression. Well first of all, because I've given talks on depression

before or at least mentioned it, a psychiatrist did pull me up to say, and I'm going to mention

this at the very beginning of this talk, that there are severe forms of depression. I'm

talking about very clinical bad cases of depression which should be treated by a qualified doctor

first of all. The sorts of depression which I'm talking about this evening are those ones

which are not so severe as to totally incapacitate you.

However, the other types of depression which one still has most of one's mental faculties,

one can get out and about but one still has this deep sense of greyness to one's life

called depression. So if it is severe please go and see a doctor. But if it's moderate,

mild, or to prevent it happening in the first place, please listen to what I'm about to

say.

And contemplating this before I came in here, I could sort of see like three major causes

of depression in our world. First, and especially in our modern world, it does seem that depression

is a modern sickness, it didn't seem to have so much incidence in the past and I think

one of the reasons is, is because the inherent negativity and fault finding in our society.

So that's one of the first things I'm going to talk about, to how to counteract negativity

and fault finding. And secondly it is a direct consequence of the amount of craving and desires

we have in our modern world. We tend to think we need so much more, both materially and

socially than maybe in the past. You know, we've lost the sense of respecting simplicity.

And lastly, and more profoundly, just because of some of the nature of existence can be

very depressing and it's this last particular aspect which very easily responds to what

you just did a few minutes ago in meditation.

So there's the three parts of this talk. The negativity and fault finding. The over...the

over indulgence in cravings. And also something more profound about the nature of life itself.

But the first one is the first part which I often talk about and Buddhists often help

with saying that a lot of the problem with depression is because of an inherent negativity

and fault finding which is in our modern society.

You look at your life that when you are at school people are always judging you and often

negatively. Not everyone can come top of the class, not everybody can sort of get one of

these medals and everybody else tends to think they are a loser.

Not everyone can find a nice relationship with the boy or the girl that they love and

so even at that time when you're searching for a partner in life it's just so hard to

get what you think is the perfect partner and again people in relationships thinks they're

losers.

And in life you try to get a job, you try to do well in your career, you try to get

on in the world and people are pushing you and sometimes they ask you, you know, you're

40 50 years of age, what are you doing, you're sort of...you know you're serving burgers

in MacDonald's is that all you're doing, you're a failure, you're a loser. Isn't it the case

that people are just so critical and want to put you down even though you may be able

to serve the best veggie burgers in the whole of the MacDonald's chains of restaurants.

But what does that mean. It means that there's so much negativity in our world, always people

pointing out the faults, pointing out your faults and what happens when you get married,

well you have a nice relationship for the first couple of years yeah people love each

other then they start pointing out the faults.

There's one of those great stories that a person who got married and used to say as

the father in-law took the daughter-in-law...no the father-in-law took his new son-in-law

aside, so you probably love my, my daughter very much. Yes I've just married her, she's

beautiful, she's charming, she's wonderful, even the way she puts her finger in her ear

to get the wax out is charming. And he said that's what it's like when you get married,

everything you do is just loveable.

And the father-in-law said but in one or two years time you'll start to see the faults

and defects in my daughter but please son-in-law always remember this, always remember if my

daughter did not have those faults to begin with, she'd have married someone much better

than you. [LAUGHTER]

And that's actually a very profound thing you're saying there because look you know

how can you expect to get a perfect partner when you're not perfect. So isn't it the case

because we're so fault finding that's one of the reasons why relationships have a difficult

road, why it's so tough to keep a partner because we're always finding faults with them

and they're finding faults with you. You know what that does, that sucks, that takes all

the happiness and joy out of marriage.

So where is all this negativity and fault finding coming from. It's actually almost..it's

brainwashed into us since we're very young. At school, in the playground, you know going

out together, we're just so fault finding to the point that people start to believe

all that negative input to their brain. I'm not beautiful enough, I'm not charming enough,

I'm not intelligent enough. I'm not this enough. Until we eventually believe it and of course

that's a huge amount of depression which comes up because we are not good enough.

I still remember this when I first came to Perth the very first year this thirteen year

old girl came to see me. Her father organised a meeting, she wanted counselling, she'd been

to all the other psychologists, psychiatrists or whatever in Perth and this was the last

resort to go and see a Buddhist monk. They must have been desperate in those days to

come see a Buddhist monk. Because we didn't have much of a reputation and I asked her

what's your problem and she took a long time to get it out of her cause you know when people

really feel they have a big problem and they just don't want to share it with you especially

a thirteen or fourteen year old young girl.

And eventually I got it out of her. She said, looking down at the floor feeling so embarrassed,

she said 'my nose is too big'. Now you know, you girls you know that, you know where she's

coming from, that to her every time she looked in the mirror she saw her nose and it was

too big.

I tried to use like a scientific approach to her problem, you know I mentally I measured

her nose and I've seen many noses in my life and I measured it in my mind and I told her,

lady that your nose is pretty average. It's not the most beautiful nose, it's certainly

not the most ugly nose, its just a nose, it's average ok. But she wouldn't accept that for

her it was the biggest problem because it was right in front of her face.

I didn't, I didn't actually help her, but she helped me to understand the negativity

of fault finding. You can see a nose and you exaggerate it simply because you're looking

for faults.

It is that nature of our human mind when it hasn't been proper trained to always see what's

wrong in things, rather than what is right. And that attitude causes a lot of depression.

I'm gonna have to ask you to excuse me those who come here every week for the last ten

or twenty years, many of you have heard these stories before but because this is a talk

on depression and many people are gonna hear this for the first time. One of the classic

stories is that story of the two bad bricks in the wall. On Tuesday night I was in Brisbane,

first time I've been to Brisbane to give talks, and one of the people there in question time

he said Ajahn Brahm I've read that story, I've heard it many times, can you please tell

it again...I just wanna hear it live. [LAUGHTER]

So I told that story and it's a deep story, simple but it actually points out what I'm

talking about. The story of the two bad bricks in the wall, twenty six years ago, twenty

seven years ago when we moved to Serpentine to build that monastery down there we had

no money, we were broke, and because... we owed money for the land, there were no buildings

on that property. So I had to learn how to build. And I was theoretical physicist before,

ok, in my head doing sums all day. Now I had to get out there and get my hands dirty and

mix concrete and lay bricks and put on a roof and do plumbing. Everything we did.

And even to this day, if any of you going into that main hall in our monastery, I am

the builder. My name is on the building license for that. And it's still standing so that's

pretty good. [LAUGHTER]

So in particular, this story I had to learn how to lay bricks. Laying bricks was not a

simple thing to do, it may look easy but it's so hard to get everything level. But, as most

people would be I was a perfectionist. I had to make sure that brick was perfectly level

before I went onto the next one. Sometimes one corner was high, you'd knock it down and

another corner would go up. You knock that corner down then it would go out of line.

You knock it back into line thinking it was finished, you notice one of the corners was

high again.

It was just one of those jobs which, where you couldn't get everything in the right place

but you kept on trying until you got it. It took a long time but it didn't matter cause

I wasn't being paid. So I could take however long I wanted.

And when I finished that wall, that first brick wall, like anybody else you were proud,

finished, you stood back to look at it and admire it, and it was only then when it was

finished I noticed that two bricks were crooked. All the other bricks were straight, two bricks

were crooked. So what would you do? What I did was try and scrape the mortar out so I

could reset the bricks so they could be perfect. But the mortar was hard, you couldn't scrape

it out. And the other monk who was with me at the time, Ajahn Jagaro, I asked him look

can we afford, can we please afford some dynamite so I blow it up and start again? Bulldozer

would do, push it over. Because...that spoiled the whole wall. Those two bad bricks, they

ruined the whole thing.

But we couldn't, I was stuck with it, we were too poor to do anything with it. So for three

months, every time I went passed that wall I saw my mistakes and I felt so sad. I'd stuffed

up. And the worst thing about stuffing up when you're building everybody could see it,

you can't hide it. It's a big wall, out there in the open. So, every time there was a visitor,

I would actually volunteer to take them around so I could, you know, take them somewhere

else so they wouldn't see my mistakes. At night time I'd have nightmares about that

wall. I would, I'd dream of it, because I'd really made a big mistake and everybody could

see it. And it was three months, roughly, I'm not quite sure it's a long time ago now,

about three months somebody else was with me and they saw that wall and they said that's

a beautiful wall. And I just couldn't believe what I'd heard because for three months I'd

been suffering so much with that wall and they said it's a beautiful wall.

My first reaction was to ask them are you visually impaired, are you blind, did you

leave your glasses in the car? Can't you see those two bad bricks, the crooked ones. And

what they said next just changed much of the way I look at life and stopped a lot of inherent

depression in myself. What they said was yes I can see the two bad bricks, but I can also

see the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks as well. And that really hit me, because

I realised for three months I was blind. All I ever saw was my two mistakes and I just

could not see all the beautiful perfect bricks which I had laid. And when that guy told me

what about the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks that was the first time in three

months that I could actually see the bricks above, below, to the left and the right of

my two mistakes. And I had to agree with the fellow, it was a beautiful wall, once I could

see the whole picture.

And I realised why is it our psychology, where do we get this from, that we just see our

two mistakes and we become blind to everything else we've ever done. Why every other part

of that relationship, that life, that project we just see one or two mistakes and that totally

obsesses us to the point where I wanted to destroy that wall, I wanted to blow it up.

Now can you understand what depression comes from? A lot of times, mistakes happen in life,

tragedies occur, a loved one dies, you get cancer, you lose your job, lose everything

on the stock market. One day you're prime minister, the next day you're not. [LAUGHTER]

So you can see it's very easy to get depressed IF all you see is just that one event, that