Stories for helping strangers
4 Buddhist wisdom stories for helping strangers from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ajahn Chah pushed their car out of the mudStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Devotees stuck in mud meet a forest monk who helps push the car out — it is Ajahn Chah. Later the story mutates into 'we've seen his psychic powers' even though the helper was…
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pushed their car out of the mud now that's a humble monk who doesn't mind getting wet who can actually help other people doesn't matter if you're a big monk or big abber you can push the car and get mud and wet and soaked that's what a real is they were very very impressed of the real compassion of a monk so they didn't need to get wet but then it was only about couple hundred meters to the hall where they get to give the talk and there they saw a and sha sitting there completely dry not a speck of mud on him and they thought wow a Char left his body or made a double body like in The Matrix and actually pushed our car out out of compassion not only is it compassion this guy's got psychic powers we've seen it
- Eye shades for a stranger at ChangiStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Between flights at Changi he gives airline eye shades to an exhausted Western woman he does not know; her smile stays with him.
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changy airport once and I saw this poor Western lady trying to get some rest I know what it's like when you've been over an all night flight and you know feel really terrible you just want to get a few hours of sleep before you get your connecting flight and know she was on some sort of couch trying to get some shut ey you know moving all over the place and I had uh I ey Shades you know from the air aircraft and I got out the eye shades she didn't know me I didn't know her I said have some eye shades ma'am
- Jumper leads on the prison road at dawnStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Driving the monastery road between the prison and the dam at dawn, the monks find an elderly couple stuck all night with a flat battery. Jumper leads start their car; the couple…
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there was this old couple had been stuck in the car all night their car had had a low battery and they didn't know how to fix it and that part of the world that's kings we drive between the prison and the dam no one uses that road at night time so this elderly couple had gone out for a nice little Drive and got stuck in the middle of nowhere and they stayed there five or six hours all night until the dawn came up and of course the first car on that road with us the Buddhist monastery car what and our car had some jumper leads in it so he could charge up the charge up there their battery so that car could start again although it is so happy and almost nothing could convert to Buddhism if we were like that but we're not doing things to get anything out of anybody
- The tourist whose car Bill Gates fixedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Remote northern California: a tourist's car fails with no mobile coverage; a farmer stops and fixes it. Later the tourist learns the farmer was Bill Gates travelling alone —…
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tourist in the north of California who broke down. Not in uh busy traffic, sorry. This was breaking down in some of the more remote parts of northern California. And he couldn't fix his car. And then when he managed to get uh he tried everything but couldn't fix it. There's no mobile coverage. He had a mobile phone there. He was quite tech savvy the the driver of the car, but he couldn't fix his car. And a farmer came by and the farmer fixed his car for him. A simple thing because farmers have to know that. Because there's no one else to fix the car for the farmers. So the farmer fixed his car. They shook and they left. Thank you very much, said the driver. And it was just a few few weeks later that the farmer he had a letter from his bank saying that all the debts for his farm had been paid off. And for his equipment and a quite a large sum of money had been deposited to his credit in the bank. Because the the driver of that car who broken down was apparently Bill Gates