Stories for cancer diagnosis
5 Buddhist wisdom stories for cancer diagnosis from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Between the tiger and the snake: taste the honeyStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Chased by a man-eating tiger, a man jumps into a dry well, catches a root and hangs between the tiger pawing from above and a cobra striking from below, while a black and a white…
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that was a story of the man who was being chased by the tiger this is the story which says what to do when everything goes terribly wrong he is being chased by a tiger in the jungle, a man-eating tiger and these two things you should know about tigers. First of all, they can run much faster than you can so if you're being chased you’re in big trouble. And number two, they like human beings for dinner. It's a delicacy, especially fat human beings like monks So anyway this tiger was running after this man in the jungle what did the man do he was really in big trouble the tiger was almost at his at his heels he saw a hole in there in the jungle, an abandoned well. Yes, it's exciting isn't it? (Audience laughed) Thank you for those special effects (Audience laughed) and he had no choice, he took a risk he jumped into that well and as soon as he committed to jumping into the well that's when he realized he made a big mistake. You ever done that? You know you take a risk and you find Oh! Oh! big mistake. Because that well was dry there was no water in the bottom instead of water there was a big black snake coiled up at the bottom of the well. Instinctively he reached to the side of the well and grabbed a root which was poking through the wall of the well that stopped his fall and when he sort of settle down and came to, he looked up. The tiger hadn't given up yet, the tiger was leaning over the well trying to paw him from above but his hand, his hand holding the root was just too low the tiger couldn't reach him and then he looked down the snake had woken up, the snake had lifted its head, had open its hood and hisss… Did I get any of you that way? Look, it's Friday evening you've been at work I need to wake you up somehow, to make this alive. trying to strike his feet but the feet were just too high the snake was stretching couldn't quite hit the guy's feet. So there he was, stuck between a man-eating tiger and a venomous snake and as he was wondering what to do next he saw from a hole in the side of the well two mice crawl out. A black mouse and a white mouse and those mice started chewing at the roots. Just to make it a little bit more scary. So what should he do next? What would you do? You get so anxious and afraid, the the roots getting thinner and thinner, I’ve got Tiger above me, a snake below. Aah! but not this guy. This guy had been to the Buddhist temple many times. He'd read the story “opening the door of your heart” he knew exactly what to do. That's why you come to places like this. If you’re ever in a jungle and this happens to you you know exactly what to do or something similar because what was happening next. The tiger, the tiger was trying to paw him from below and his backside was rubbing against the tree making the tree shakes. On a branch of the tree directly above the well there was a beehive. Don’t worry about the bees they’re okay but as the hive was shaking honey started to drip down and this man put out his tongue to taste the honey and said Mmm, that's so delicious. And that is the end of the story.
- “I never expected to see you in here”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Feeling awful and waiting at the local doctor's surgery, Ajahn Brahm is greeted by a friend from the temple: “I never expected to see you in here.” As if he were in a brothel or…
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Years and years and years ago, I had, I think, some sort of sickness and never found out exactly what it was about, over 20 years ago now, the last time I was really sick.. And I went to the doctors and I was sitting there in the doctor's surgery in Byford waiting for the doctor to call me in, and somebody who knew me came into the doctor's surgery and they saw me, this monk, who meditates, who lives a nice peaceful lifestyle, who doesn't get involved in the stresses of normal life, and they looked at me and they said “I never expected to see you in here!” [laughter]. And I felt really guilty - maybe I wasn't eating enough brown rice, maybe I wasn't exercising.. I'm supposed to be a monk! I'm supposed to be healthy, living a good lifestyle, and he made me feel guilty about being in a doctor's surgery. Okay, if I was in a pub or a brothel or something then and I should feel guilty [laughter], but what's wrong with being in a doctor's surgery!?
- Surrounded in Burma: “Sit down and make a cup of tea”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An older fellow teacher tells young Ajahn Brahm how, as a frightened WWII conscript in Burma, his patrol was surrounded by Japanese troops; he wanted to fight out heroically, but…
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It was a story of the guy who was a soldier in Burma during the 2WW. This was a fellow school teacher in the one year I was a school teacher. This guy told me this story is very old about to retire. Because he had been drafted into the British Army during the Second World War and sent to Burma to fight Japanese and he wasn't a military man, he was like just a schoolteacher. Everybody had to join up in those days. So he found himself fighting a war in a foreign country which he didn't really understand with real bullets and he was very very afraid and what happened one day he told me that his fear got reached its peak. When he was out on patrol in the jungles with a small group of fellow British soldiers. And the captain or other Scout came back to tell them the news that they had stumbled into a huge number of Japanese troops. They were vastly outnumbered and now they were surrounded and there was no way out. He thought he was going to die. This was war, surrounded by the enemy, outnumbered, about to die. Now those of you have ever known people who've fought in wars or battles you will know from the tales of soldiers that no one ever knows who's going to be the hero and who's going to be the coward. These big strong guys sometimes in those terrible situations they just fall apart where these little guys you know you never think will be the hero stand out for the occasion and they become tall they're the heroes and this was this guy he said he had all this great heroism coming through his system, he decided to be the hero. He told the captain ''let's fight our way out''. the chances of anyone surviving, a zero but who knows sometimes you know somebody might survive, they certainly survive in the movies but against all the odd. Who knows? And anyway, even if we do all die we take some the enemy with us into death. That's the heroic thing to do that's what real men do. So he wanted to fight his way out. But his captain said no, we will not fight our way out. That's an order. and they had to follow that order instead said the captain I order you to all sit down and make a cup of tea and I often say at this point. It was the British army after all. And he couldn't believe this order ‘make a cup of tea ‘ when we're surrounded by Japanese troops at war, outnumbered, about to die. How could you think of having a cup of tea but an order was an order they had to follow it, he thought this was the craziest thing he'd ever done in his whole life. It was to save his life because what happened by the time even before they'd made their cup of tea the Scout came back whispers something in in the captain’s ear and the captain got all the troops together and said the Scout has said the enemy has moved there is a way through, put your stuff away quickly we can crawl through this gap and all escape and of course they all did. Which is why he could tell the story and he said he'd owe his life not just once but many times the wisdom of that captain when there's nothing to do when you're surrounded and about to die what should you do? Sit down and have a cup of tea, if you prefer coffee, coffee will do. I don't care, sit down and enjoy some honey because you know that things change the surrounding army never stays still they move and when they move if you have a scout called mindfulness awareness it will see gaps in the surrounding forces it will see a way through which wasn't there before, a way to escape. And if you've waited you'll find that gap and you will escape. The trouble with most people when surrounded by the enemy about to die when things are really going wrong. we just lose it, we get upset, we get angry, we get depressed. We don't know how to have a cup of tea and enjoy ourselves just before we're about to die and then we find we don't die. We enjoy ourselves, we wait situation changes and then we can make our move and escape with our life he said later on he had cancer, terminal cancer. He thought he was about to die, he remembered that story about when he was a soldier surrounded by the enemy, no hope by these tumors or whatever else he had. He didn't tell me what cancer it was and what did he do. Just relax and had a cup of tea and didn’t worry about anything. That's what he learnt in the jungles of Burma. Maybe because he didn't worry because he had tea and I know that tea has lots of T cells and T cells are supposed to (inaudible) you know it’s tea and T- cells. Okay, I'm not a doctor or medicine man. (Laughter) Why, the doctors are going crazy but no, he had a cup of tea just relaxed because he didn't worry the cancer vanished he saved his life he found a way through.
- The monk who laughed at his cancer diagnosisStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Dr K. Sri Dhammananda, the 'chief priest of Malaysia' and author of 'How to Live Without Fear and Worry', was, his doctor said, the only patient he ever met who burst out…
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One of the monks who has been here before, but he died maybe about a year ago. He was the - we used to call him the chief priest of Malaysia, Dr K. Sri Dhammananda. He has got a few books in our library, like How to Live Without Fear and Worry is one of his famous ones. It's easier to write a book, isn't it? But can you do it? When he was diagnosed with cancer, terminal cancer, his doctor said he's the only person he ever met who, when he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, burst out laughing. Now, that's a monk!
- Two bad bricks in the wallStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Building the broke new monastery at Serpentine, the ex-physicist monk lays his first brick wall with painstaking perfectionism — then sees two crooked bricks. He wants to…
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The story of the two bad bricks in the wall, twenty six years ago, twenty seven years ago when we moved to Serpentine to build that monastery down there we had no money, we were broke, and because... we owed money for the land, there were no buildings on that property. So I had to learn how to build. And I was theoretical physicist before, ok, in my head doing sums all day. Now I had to get out there and get my hands dirty and mix concrete and lay bricks and put on a roof and do plumbing. Everything we did. And even to this day, if any of you going into that main hall in our monastery, I am the builder. My name is on the building license for that. And it's still standing so that's pretty good. [LAUGHTER] So in particular, this story I had to learn how to lay bricks. Laying bricks was not a simple thing to do, it may look easy but it's so hard to get everything level. But, as most people would be I was a perfectionist. I had to make sure that brick was perfectly level before I went onto the next one. Sometimes one corner was high, you'd knock it down and another corner would go up. You knock that corner down then it would go out of line. You knock it back into line thinking it was finished, you notice one of the corners was high again. It was just one of those jobs which, where you couldn't get everything in the right place but you kept on trying until you got it. It took a long time but it didn't matter cause I wasn't being paid. So I could take however long I wanted. And when I finished that wall, that first brick wall, like anybody else you were proud, finished, you stood back to look at it and admire it, and it was only then when it was finished I noticed that two bricks were crooked. All the other bricks were straight, two bricks were crooked. So what would you do? What I did was try and scrape the mortar out so I could reset the bricks so they could be perfect. But the mortar was hard, you couldn't scrape it out. And the other monk who was with me at the time, Ajahn Jagaro, I asked him look can we afford, can we please afford some dynamite so I blow it up and start again? Bulldozer would do, push it over. Because...that spoiled the whole wall. Those two bad bricks, they ruined the whole thing. But we couldn't, I was stuck with it, we were too poor to do anything with it. So for three months, every time I went passed that wall I saw my mistakes and I felt so sad. I'd stuffed up. And the worst thing about stuffing up when you're building everybody could see it, you can't hide it. It's a big wall, out there in the open. So, every time there was a visitor, I would actually volunteer to take them around so I could, you know, take them somewhere else so they wouldn't see my mistakes. At night time I'd have nightmares about that wall. I would, I'd dream of it, because I'd really made a big mistake and everybody could see it. And it was three months, roughly, I'm not quite sure it's a long time ago now, about three months somebody else was with me and they saw that wall and they said that's a beautiful wall. And I just couldn't believe what I'd heard because for three months I'd been suffering so much with that wall and they said it's a beautiful wall. My first reaction was to ask them are you visually impaired, are you blind, did you leave your glasses in the car? Can't you see those two bad bricks, the crooked ones. And what they said next just changed much of the way I look at life and stopped a lot of inherent depression in myself. What they said was yes I can see the two bad bricks, but I can also see the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks as well. And that really hit me, because I realised for three months I was blind. All I ever saw was my two mistakes and I just could not see all the beautiful perfect bricks which I had laid. And when that guy told me what about the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks that was the first time in three months that I could actually see the bricks above, below, to the left and the right of my two mistakes. And I had to agree with the fellow, it was a beautiful wall, once I could see the whole picture.