I've been thinking about asking for a girl's number who's been staring at me, who I've been terrified of, even with meditation.
Since I fear her, it is a question, should I confront her or would that pursuit backfire?
giving dating advice.
I can get in trouble here.
If I give you advice as to how to hook up with someone, it's a serious offense of the window.
So I certainly can't tell you how to get the girl.
Someone's already given an answer.
Be brave and talk to her.
Girls love guys who are confident.
Yeah, see, if I said something like that, I could be in serious trouble from the women's point of view, just to let you know.
So it's a difficult question to answer.
They shouldn't fear people at all.
And you could create a harmonious relationship
outside of romance, if you were to talk to her, that's where I would go with it.
I think the best advice you can give to someone is to create friendships.
Whether romance occurs or not, it's not really going to make you happy.
In fact, it often makes you miserable.
But friendship will never, true friendship will never make you miserable.
Love for people will never make you miserable.
But you have to be able to separate love from attachment.
Most of what we think of as love is not really love, attachment.
Or it's the two mixed together.
So yeah, and I think that should help you with your fear as well.
If you looked at it as a chance to make a friend, or a chance to cultivate
loving kindness if you want to call it loving kindness if you have if you if you aren't afraid of losing something you see because why are you afraid because of how you look because of how she'll what she'll think of you because of
You don't know how to act or so on.
That's the big deal.
I mean, that's the big deal with everything.
Why fear comes up?
Because you're afraid of failure.
You're afraid of looking bad.
You're afraid of people laughing at you.
The biggest lesson I learned as a teacher was to stop being afraid of people laughing at me and criticizing me.
It's such a wonderful thing to have people say bad things about you.
It's just so liberating.
Because there's only one answer to say, who cares?
If someone calls you a buffalo, just turn around and see if you've got a tail.
If you've got a tail, okay, you're a buffalo.
If you don't, why are you upset?
And that's really the deal, is many times the criticism is valid.
People criticize you, and it's valid.
It's like, wow, well, yes, that's the truth.
And if it's not, it's not.
But that's all it is.
If you say something really stupid and you act like an idiot and the girl realizes, oh God, this guy is socially inept.
Well, okay, so you're socially inept.
Who cares?
Really, that's the question.
Who cares?
What is the problem with being incompetent, useless, meaningless?
I think that's the most liberating thing is to realize how useless you are.
To realize that you're
You have no value whatsoever.
I think I gave a talk on that once.
I've certainly talked about it before.
I think that's a wonderful thing, to realize that you have no value.
It goes so contrary to what we're taught in modern societies.
You are valuable.
You are special.
Oh, wasn't there a talk?
Someone posted a talk.
recently this guy gave a valedictorian address where I don't remember what it was about or if it was even Buddhist but there was one part that was kind of intriguing he says you're all taught that you're special and I want to tell you you're not and so the whole talk was about how you're not special because if you're special then you've got a reputation to maintain
You've got something to live up to, something to cling to.
You're not special.
You're just a lump of flesh on a rock.
Big rock.
In a remote corner of the galaxy.
Mostly harmless.
That's all we are.
When you can think like that, then you should have no trouble.
When you have no expectations and no desires, that's where the best friendships come, when you have no desires and no expectations, even for friendship, where you give people the opportunity to benefit from your presence, where you
give people your service and your help as they ask for it, and as their need becomes apparent.
But don't look for anything more, and don't cling to them, and don't pull them, and don't try to keep them or hold them or anything.
This is so much suffering and stress.
Ajahn Brahmavangsa, he said something
quite clever about this.
He asked a question, who is the most important person?
And his answer was, I think I disagree that actually the most important person is yourself.
And if all of us, because the Buddha clearly said that you're to look after your own behavior, for example.
Do your own work.
And that's what actually benefits others.
But
He certainly has a point when he says the most important person is whoever you're with.
And it's an important point in the sense of not clinging to beings or people and saying, this is who I have to help, this is who I love, this is who I want to be with, and so on.
And be with whoever you're with.
When you're with someone, be with them.
When you're with someone else, be with someone else.
Rather than cultivating friendships
Cultivate friendship.
There you go.
There's a quote for you.
Rather than cultivating friendships, cultivate friendship.
Friendliness.
Be the kind of friend that you'd like to have.
Be that friend to everyone.
And then you can't go wrong.
I mean, and then this girl's staring is meaningless.
Like, well, if she wants to stare at me, good for her.
Maybe that makes her happy.
I don't know.
At any rate, it's none of my business.
But if she needs my help, I'm there to give it.
If she doesn't, well, there certainly will be someone who does.
But when you focus on this girl and lady, woman, female being, it limits you, and it takes away your energies, and it creates all sorts of stress and fear, which is not good for either of you.
I would say go up and talk to her and create a more wholesome behavior.
Because if someone's staring at you, I mean, well, it's kind of a reason to start a conversation, I don't know.
But as a Buddhist monk, I'm bound to answer in terms of platonic relationships.
I certainly don't have anything to recommend in terms of romance.
And much to try to dissuade you from, much to speak against it, from experience and from practice and from theory.
Romance is really not where it's at.