Managing the Ups and Downs in Life

My idol Ajahn Brahm was in town again tonight. How can I miss his talk right? The crowd tonight was so huge…there were practically no space to walk at all. Many had to stand outside the hall to listen to him. He is getting extremely popular in Singapore. I won’t be able to attend the second session tomorrow night as I’ve got to teach. I’m sure he’ll understand and forgive me…hehe! He’s going to talk about enlightenment. Can someone go attend and share with me?

Tonight, he gave a wonderful talk on how to handle the ups and downs in life and began by saying this:

When it’s hot, keep a cool head.
When it’s cold, keep a warm heart.

Simple but perfect words of wisdom right? I just love the things he say. And he does it everytime without having any premeditated scripts. His words and examples just seem to flow ever so endlessly.

Ajahn says the ups and downs, successes and failures, are all part of life. We should not complain or blame anyone when things happen, they just happen. And when it does, we should stop and learn to do something about it. We don’t know how to love until we’ve been hurt. How true that is. The tragedies in life teach us a lesson and these painful and difficult things are the masters of our life as they provide a great opportunity for us to learn and grow.

He gave the example of a cup. There’s a crack on a porcelain cup but we can’t see it. If we were to ignore this slight crack, it will keep expanding until the cup breaks one day. But if we were to notice it, we will treat the cup with extra care and respect and ensure it does not break. However, if we were to use a plastic cup, we will never respect it because we take it for granted as we know it will never break.

We should regard the things we don’t like in life as our ajahn or teacher. Without difficulties, we won’t be able to grow to be the people we are. We should learn to make peace with the ups and downs we face in life. If there’s nothing we can do, then just do nothing but should an opportunity arise for us to do something, we should grab it.

Life is always changing, situations will always alter. So when we are surrounded by ‘enemies’ and there’s nothing we can do, we should just relax and do nothing about it. Treat all uncertainties in life as opportunities. You never know, by not doing anything, things may actually turn out better.

He told another story.

Story of two chicken farmers
Once there were two chicken farmers. One would go round every morning to collect the chicken shit from the ground and left the eggs to rot. The second chicken farmer will go round to collect all the eggs and leave the chicken shit on the ground. So which type of chicken farmer are we? Are we fault-finders or positive thinkers?

Do we choose to remember the wonderful times we had together with our loved ones or do we remember all the bad times and problems we had? When we choose to remember the bad times and faults, we get depressed but if we choose to remember the good points or successes, we become a happier person.

So learn to put happiness in whatever we do, learn to have fun when we are up. By appreciating the ups in life, it’ll last much longer. Laugh at life, it increases your life, your health.

Success does not make you happy
Happiness makes you successful

Find happiness first, then you’ll become successful in life.

Learn to appreciate yourself, your journey in life.