Stories for fundraising
4 Buddhist wisdom stories for fundraising from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- He sang The Sound of Silence for $10,000Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A sponsor offered a $10,000 cheque for the nuns' monastery if Ajahn Brahm would sing. Monks don't sing — and he can't — so he chose Simon and Garfunkel's The Sound of Silence,…
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This will be for your nuns monastery if you sing a song." Now, we don't sing songs as monks. It's against our rules. But there's also a reason for that cuz our singing is terrible. But then I thought very quickly and I said, "Okay, I will sing a song for you if you let me choose a song and I'll just uh sing it just ac cappella. There's no band behind me." And many of you, I think, know this song. you're my age, you're getting on a bit. And so I said, the song I'm going to sing is from this famous US group called the Beach Boys. Was it Beach Boy? No, it wasn't Beach Boys. Sorry. It was Simon and Garuncle. The Sound of Silence. That's not a song. It is. It's called The Sound of Silence. and I just shut up and sat there and eventually she gave in and gave the $10,000 to the nuns honestly. That's the only ever song I've sung in in public
- The father in the singletStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: When the Buddhist Society had just opened a bank account for a future nuns' monastery, with only a dollar here and five dollars there, a man in jeans and a singlet — 'the sort of…
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I can never forget one afternoon at the monastery where I live in Serpentine a man came and he was wearing jeans and a singlet the sort of person you'd know see in a pub and he came to tell me that his wife had just given birth to their first child a daughter and he wanted to do something out of celebration for the birth of his first child and he' heard that we were wanting to build a monastery for Buddhist women and he said I don't know if my daughter will ever become a Buddhist let alone wanted to become a nun but who knows so I want to make a donation for your nun's Monastery and he handed over a check for $250,000 just like that and I've never seen him again I don't know where he came from but if he if he's ever around and he hears this talk please come and say hello and just to see how far that donation has gone and maybe you can make another one but no no no it just to and say hello but it was so inspiring that that sort of stuff can happen they just totally out of the blue not expecting anything and he certainly didn't look like a rich man at all
- The hypnotist monk's donation boxJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A new monk can't pay his temple's bills. A senior monk advises: close the doors, turn up the heat, give a boring monotone sermon, swing a fob watch and hypnotise everyone — 'when…
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this was a guy uh he was a a new monk. He started a new temple. has found it very very difficult to actually raise enough funds, you know, to pay the bills. And of course, you can understand why, you know, when somebody just starts out at temple, people don't know whether they're going to last. So why should you, you know, give donations when you don't know whether it's going to be used well. So he went to see a senior monk and a senior monk told him, "Well, try this technique. I tried this when I started out with my own temple. He said on a Friday night when you give a talk, make sure all the doors are closed, make sure there's no ventilation and make sure you turn the heat up so it gets very hot and stuffy. And when it's very hot and stuffy, give a boring sermon. The way to give a boring sermon, you teach it in a low tone, like a mono tone. I'm teaching a boring sermon now. And I'm sure many of you know what I'm going to say. And he said, "Then what to do when your audience are about to fall asleep, get out those old watches, you know, with the uh what they call them? Fob watches, I think. Get one of those fob watches. move it left to right, left to right, and hypnotize everybody. And once everybody's hypnotized, I say about 200 people in here. Once you're all hypnotized, then you give them the instruction. When you leave, don't forget to put donation in donation box. No coins, no fives, tens or 20s, only 50s and hundreds. He said, "I can't do that. That's illegal." And the senior monk said, "No, that's just encouraging good karma. It's good for people." So he he tried it and he made a fortune that day. He had lots of no 20s or tens or coins, just 50s and hundreds in the donation box. Worth a fortune. Imagine that. There's 200 people in here. Wow. So he decided he can't do that every day. So he waited until he needed some more money to pay the bills. And so he tried it again. He said, closed all the doors and all the windows, made it very stuffy and hot inside and started giving a boring sermon. And when people were falling asleep, he got out of his fob watch and started swinging it. But before they were hypnotized, he dropped it and it went smashed on the ground because it was surprise to him. He said the word. What did he say? I just repeated what you said. He said, "Oh shit." And that's what people did. Serves him right. a couple of weeks to clean up.
- They auctioned his robe in MelbourneStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Melbourne fundraiser for a new monastery, Ven. Mudita (captioned Moodau), whom he had ordained, asked for his robe to auction. He protested he'd be naked in cold Melbourne;…
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I ordained him, Venable Moodau. He said, "Ajent bra, we need your robe." It's not this one. The one I had before. We need your robe. Said why? To auction it. But you can't auction my robe. I'll be naked. Well, not really naked, but you know. And Melbourne is a very cold place. And so he didn't argue with me. He just took my robe off and gave me another one to wear, which is this one. So if my robe I don't really own it gets it gets auctioned off to other people. So what do you actually own? You know, I don't mind when you can actually people can take these things and give me another give me something else to wear, you know, and a nice similar. They had a new rope for me. He said, "Wear this one." But my old robe is fine. We're not listening. Take the old robe