I have a sincere question to ask you, and I don't mean to be disrespectful, but you have about 1,000 videos uploaded, even videos from video game.
Could this be some sort of clinging to social media?
Yes, it very well could be.
I have about 600 videos uploaded.
That's getting closer to a thousand.
The videos are not from a video game, they're from a video universe.
I guess they call it a game, but you can trust me, the people at that place, some of them see it as a game, but many of them are quite...
serious to use it as a platform.
It was actually designed as a platform mostly to play and find sensual enjoyment, but it's been used for many other purposes as well.
There's a center that
for victims of suicide, survivors of suicide.
I was talking with this woman there.
Universities use it for online collaboration and meetings and so on.
So it can be used for other purposes.
And I feel like I used it for other purposes, that people did get something.
In the end, I did kind of lose interest, because it does seem a little bit game-ish.
And the quality of the audience is not as
I mean, people, their interest in the Dhamma was not as high as it might be on, well, on YouTube, I don't know, Google Hangout.
But that kind of isn't answering the question.
The question is whether this could be some sort of clinging.
And yeah, it very well could be.
In my defense...
I'm not really pushing to do this.
I'm doing it as a means of making my
life, I guess you could say, life easier, because it happens to be an easy way to teach people.
Putting up 600 videos may seem like a lot of work, but well, it's been over how many years now?
I think I started in 2007, I think.
So that's five years.
Five years, 600 videos isn't a terrible, you know, that's how many videos every, a video every three days or something.
That's a lot, no?
But the other thing is a lot of those videos, like I did 28 videos last Sunday.
It's just a number, right?
It means I answered 28 questions last Sunday.
But the point, for example, of answering questions is that I used to have to answer people's emails.
I used to have to answer the same questions
every week.
Because you answer it once, you're answering it for one person.
By answering it on YouTube and putting a video on YouTube, I can say I've answered the question for everyone who has, everyone who has, you know, internet.
And so I don't feel the need to answer people's emails anymore.
And I often don't answer people's questions via email unless it's urgent and they have some pressing urgency or they're coming to practice meditation for some reason.
But ordinarily I won't do it because I feel like I've done my duty.
The question of whether one has to do this or not, does one have a responsibility to bring...
the Buddhist teaching to others.
And I think I've talked about this before.
From my point of view, I don't think you have a responsibility.
But if one does do it, I don't think it's wrong either.
If it's a part of one's Buddhist practice to do so, I think clearly there's a place for it.
I said, if you want to live in peace and happiness, it behooves you to bring peace and happiness to the world around you.
If you're living in a place off in the jungle somewhere where you don't have to teach people, then there's no need.
There's peace and happiness in the world around you.
The problem with using that model for all of Buddhism is it doesn't work.
Buddhism is now spread throughout the globe and even here in Sri Lanka, for example.
If the Sri Lankan people don't understand Buddhism, it creates great disturbance for us as Buddhist monastics.
If the community that we're living in doesn't understand Buddhism,
our monastic lives are totally disrupted they will start cutting down the forests they will start requiring us to do things like give blessings and go to their funerals and go to their ceremonies and so on and make our lives very busy just to allow us to live as monks
They will want us to do things that are not appropriate as monks, to give charms and amulets and whatever, horoscopes, even perform marriage ceremonies and eventually become priests and eventually really actually work for the people.
if we don't teach them how to let go, how to become free, moreover they will start becoming evil people and they will go to war with each other and they will require monks to enlist in the army and so on and so on, require monks to grow food and so on and so on and make great difficulty for us.
This applies to the whole world at this point because now we're living
in a global community.
Our lives, our existence depends on the goodness existing in the world.
Buddhism requires goodness to exist in the world.
So there is an argument for it being our duty as Buddhists to protect the Buddhasasana.
And one very important way of protecting the Buddhasasana is by creating goodness in the world.
Because it's like a tidal wave.
If you've seen the evil and corruption that have destroyed Buddhist countries,
I think no one can deny the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, how it destroyed Buddhism in that country.
Or not destroyed, but seriously set Buddhism back in that country.
How war and colonization here hurt Buddhism.
For example, when the British came to Sri Lanka,
It would become, I don't know how it would happen, but it would become incredibly important to teach Buddhism to the British so that they can let go and see that this is a horrible thing that they're doing.
For example, so I would say there is a defense to be made for spreading Buddhism.
I simply see that this is a part of the community now.
Now, I'm not Sri Lankan.
I have to get a visa to stay here.
I'm Canadian.
And that makes me very much a part of the Canadian community.
the part of Canada or the country, the Western society.
Now, if I can't reach Canadian people, American people, then it's very difficult.
Buddhism doesn't reach there.
It's very difficult for me to go home even to visit my parents if I can't help my parents to understand.
You know, these are arguments that could be made in favor of this sort of thing.
Now, if it's really something that I'm keen to do, to have Google Plus hang out and to, you know, really keen to do these sorts of things, then you can see, well, it starts to be an attachment.
Like the idea last week of holding interviews.
Well, that's kind of...
getting across the edge where you start to go out of your way to do Buddhist things but simply defending Buddhism by means of spreading goodness, spreading truth I think there is a defense there because it certainly has happened by very wise and noble monks in the Buddhist time and since then who have done their part to keep Buddhism alive so that's my defense