Many years ago now I was in conversation with a monk friend of mine and we realized that he was talking to me just because he thought I wanted to talk, and I was talking to him just because I thought he wanted to talk. We were both just people-pleasing. It is a tribute to our friendship, I think, that we could be honest enough with each other to find this out. I then decided to try to find out how often I was in situations that were similarly bizarre, and self-defeating.

Actually, it began to seem to me that the pursuit of worldly pleasure is exactly like this, our relationship with the world is one where we try to please the world and the world tries to please us. We think that the world wants to talk, the world thinks that we do, actually both prefer the silence, we are just lost in our polite habit. One moment of real silence and real honesty and we come back to our senses.

Ajahn Kalyano
Senior Monk
Skiptvet Buddhist Monastery