There are heaven and hells.
Who sends you down to hell and what's it like down there?
If you go to the temples in Sri Lanka, in Burma, in Thailand,
you see all these pictures of these big vats and people boiling in the vats,
and these beings like something out of a Steven Spielberg movie or a cartoon book,
poking you with sticks, going up the tree of swords or whatever.
And that, that was...
People actually love looking at those paintings,
because in those days, before they had movies, they got off on those.
I don't know why it is that people like going to torture chambers.
I remember the Madame Tussaud's gallery and more people going into the
chamber of horrors than any other part of the gallery.
There's something weird about people, they like to see this sort of suffering.
So in those days that was the entertainment.
They painted it on the temple walls and people could watch all this stuff.
But… and I looked at that stuff and I sort of wondered –
25 centuries had gone by since then.
You know, torture has got much more advanced.
There's much better ways of torturing people than poking them with sticks.
In fact, you know, the…
Please, this is for you and Rob and all the people from Penang.
Two or three years ago…
it was actually two years ago,
when I went to Penang to do the nine-day retreat – I'm going again next month –
it was Christmas night and after finishing the talk up in the hall at the top,
and I went back to my room, it was about 10:30,
and just on the opposite side of the road, they're having a party for Christmas night.
A karaoke party.
My god, that was suffering.
And I've been teaching all day, I was tired, I wanted to rest
and people were singing this karaoke.
And if ever you… that’s the first time I've heard karaoke.
What you do first of all – you have to be drunk first of all.
And then they think they can sing like Frank Sinatra or like, you know,
Barbra Streisand or something – and they can't!
And it's out of tune, they forget the words, it's screaming, and it's…
If you're drunk, you don't notice it, but for sober people like me, like monks,
it was such suffering!
And it didn't finish ‘till about one o'clock, I forgot what the time it was,
and then I get up early in the morning so I didn't get much sleep that night.
But I realized
that if ever… the worst type of hell in the whole world will be the karaoke hell.
(laughter)
Forget about being boiled in these big tubs and these demons poking you with sticks.
Karaoke hell is much worse than that.
So, yeah, there are hells.
You make them up – for how you think you deserve to be punished.
So if I was a bad monk that's what I would do –
I’d sent myself to the karaoke hell: ‘You bad monk.
Take that for a while.’
But why would you send yourself to those places anyway.
It's not… someone else doesn't send you there.
You do.
You send yourself there,
because you're stupid enough to think you need to be punished.
And you seek for punishment.
And you make up the punishment for what you think you deserve,
for how long you deserve.
The gates of hell are always open, always open -
you could walk out any time you want.
People don't like to, because they think they don't deserve to be happy.
And you can send yourself to heaven, you can make up your own heaven.
For me, you know…
Have you seen the pictures of heaven in these temple paintings
or read about them in the sutras?
They sounded very boring to me.
They can be a much better place.
They have ambrosia in heaven – I want fish and chips.
(laughter)
They have harp music – I prefer Jimi Hendrix.
Can we have some Elvis, please? You know, ‘Don't step on my blue suede shoes’.
If you like Elvis, you can make a heaven and Elvis will be playing every night.
You make your heaven.
You actually construct it – these are mind-made realms.
And you send yourself up there, because you think you deserve it,
you give yourself a break.
You send yourself to hell, if you don't know about forgiveness.
And no one else can forgive you.
You can pray to the Buddha, to Guanyin, to Jesus, all you like.
No one will ever be able to forgive you – only you.
You know, the person you hurt.
The person you were cruel to – you go up to them and they'll say ‘I forgive you’.
It doesn't really work.
It helps but what's most important is you forgive yourself.
You let it go.
And that was such a wonderful relief and refreshing to see that in the Dhamma,
in Buddhism, that's what you do.
You forgive you.
Give yourself a break.
Acknowledge, forgive, no more punishment, total amnesty and learn.
It's a growing experience. You made a mistake – learn from it.
But no punishment.
That's so beautiful and that means you never send yourself to hell anymore.
You can just enjoy nice heavens.
In this life, where you're still alive and also when you die.
Even now people live in hell.
They can't forgive themselves for what they've done.
Why? Does that really help anybody, punishing yourself?
So forgive yourself. Let it go.
Write it on a piece of toilet paper, flush it down the toilet and have done with it.
And then you can be happy and peaceful and just move forward in life
rather than always move backwards.
So that's the toilet simile.
And there may be some people who want to go to the toilet,
so I’d better finish off now.
Otherwise I'm going to get into trouble it's 20 past…