Stories for illness
18 Buddhist wisdom stories for illness from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- A dog called ChemoStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A doctor friend in Melbourne has a big Labrador she named 'Chemo'. She was training it to visit hospital wards, because stroking a gentle animal helps very sick people recover —…
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there's one of my friends over in Melbourne, now that's Priya Mendes [?] and she’s got this big dog and it was Labrador wasn’t it, and when I saw it, I said “what's its name” and she gave it the name, she's a doctor, she gave it the name “Chemo”. Chemo the dog, that's a really weird name, why do you name it Chemo? She said “because I'm training this dog to be one of these dogs who goes into wards with people who are very, very sick, because we all know that if you take a little dog or a cat or a rabbit into a ward where people are very sick, just being able to pet that dog, to stroke it, have this beautiful soft animal in there, the compassion which a small animal or even a big animal generates amongst human beings has a very strong positive effect on people's recovery. They actually get better. Having a beautiful dog to play with in the ward, it makes you sort of, gets up all your, what's it called, the, not serotonin, all these endomorphines, all this beautiful health things in your body, you all know better than I do... but you know it really works. So that's why she called her dog Chemo because it was short for chemotherapy, that was a little joke, she's a good student of mine, has got a stupid sense of humor just like me. [laughter] So Chemo, Chemo the dog, and of course that dog went into so many wards in its life, healing people, helping people, that dog must have made huge amounts of good karma just by generating compassion in other beings.
- Ajahn Chah stopped breathing — medic takes blood samplesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After Ajahn Chah's stroke, a royal medic freaks when Chah stops breathing for hours. Monks say he's meditating. Compromise: frequent blood samples stay well oxygenated while he…
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stopped breathing and the medic on duty you know because the king of Thailand he the uh the former King he sort of paid for a medic to be on duty eight hour shifts and the medical Duty that night got freaked out when agent Charles stopped breathing and now I leave him alone he's only meditating he said no he's not breathing that's death if you don't do something quick there's no Oxygen going to the brain you get permanent break and he's already got Strokes I don't know what more you can do but he will die and so freaking out and it's very hard for monks to explain to doctors you know what's really happening and this was like a very highly trained medic and he was paranoid you know you get in trouble with the king of Thailand if you're the agent child die so they came to this wonderful compromise it was very interesting he wasn't breathing for a couple of hours so the medic would take blood sample
- Cough once, get eight bottles of medicineStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Once in Australia Ajahn Brahm coughs at the start of a talk. By the end there are eight or nine bottles in front of him — Ayurvedic, homeopathic, 'horrible but you must take…
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this happened once when I was in Australia I coughed in public the beginning of a talk by the end of the talk there was about eight or nine bottles of medicine in front of me and people said you must take this this is Ayurvedic it's very good this is homeopathic it's much better this is horrible you have to take this I took this this is no usual medicine you've got to take that had so many medicines and now being compassionate and watching people to you know to make merit I said yeah I'll take that I'll take that so I had to take every of those bottles of medicine and that really made me sick
- Hägar: 'Why me?' — 'Why not!'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a Hägar the Horrible cartoon, Hägar is shipwrecked on an island in a storm. He looks up at the sky: 'God! Why me?' And God roars back: 'Why not!'
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I got that from a cartoon once. Hägar the Horrible, do you know Hägar the Horrible? He got great cartoons. He was shipwrecked on an island. Shipwrecked, storm and he looked up in the sky and he said: "God! Why me?" And God roared back "Why not!"
- “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!?
- I'd rather die in the monastery — 25 more yearsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Famous monk in Thai royal hospital, told nothing more can be done for cancer, asks to die at his Mae Hong Son / north monastery. Taken home; dies 25 years later — peace…
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there was a famous monk who was in the main hospital being supported by the king of Thailand. All expenses paid. and was dying of cancer. You know what happens sometimes? A doctor says, "There's nothing more we can do." "So what do you do?" He said, "Well, there's nothing more I can do," said this monk. "I'd rather die in the monastery where I spent so many years." It was on the Marong River in the north of Thailand, a beautiful monastery. So he said, "If I'm going to die, I'd rather die there than in hospital." So they took him back to his monastery. 25 years later was when he died. 25 years of extra life
- It's not the cough that carries you offJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Mother's line: it's not the cough that carries you off — it's the coffin they carry you off in.
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cough that carries you off. It's the coffin they carry you off in. Haven't you heard that before? I thought that's a really neat one a long time ago. There's only a cough that's all. Sorry. Only a sneeze
- Magnolia Flora took the CDStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a Melbourne University talk, publisher Magnolia Flora offers to publish; Brahm pulls a freshly typed CD of his stories from his bag — Opening the Door of Your Heart begins.…
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I still remember this lady came up to me after the talk and said, "That was a very good talk. I work in the publishing industry. If ever you want any of those uh talks published, please let me know. And all I did next, and this is no exaggeration, I reached into my bag, this bag or similar one, and I took out a CD. So, here you go. And that's opening the door of your heart. I still remember her name because she had this wonderful name, Magnolia Flora
- Old treasurer — migraine into the dark roomStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An old BSWA treasurer, not yet Buddhist, learned in the army to beat migraine attacks by sitting 15 minutes in a quiet dark place and going so deep he could not feel his body —…
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old treasurers of all things he passed away some time ago old fellow but he used to go into these deep meditations when he was even in the army he was just uh he didn't really wasn't a buddhist at the time but he just had these terrible um migraine attacks and the only way he'd get through those migraine attacks is finding a quiet dark place and sitting in that quiet dark place for 15 minutes and going deep inside and he said he can go deeper inside enough that he could not feel his body anymore
- The blister from a cold nailStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a public demonstration of the Cambridge psychical research society, a student is hypnotised to believe a four-inch nail on a stick is red hot. It's at room temperature. When…
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hypnotized him and they had a piece of wood with a nail on the end, very simple equipment, didn't need much to buy a nail and a piece of wood and they hypnotized this guy to believe that the nail was red-hot. It was just room temperature and they touched the nail on this man's skin, he screamed in pain because he thought it was hot, you can understand that, but to see a blister come up on his skin, that was weird
- The cold that vanished mid-talkStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On his first visit to Canberra, his hosts take Ajahn Brahm everywhere all day in the cold, getting lost, with no rest. By evening he has a terrible cold, and at a big public talk…
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first time I went to Canberra to give a series of talks and to my house they took me all over the place all day and they got lost and it was one of these days no rest and just from early in the morning it was really cold so by the end of the day I had this terrible cold and I was supposed to give a talk public talk in a big Temple advertised all these people came and as soon as I started trying to give a talk every other sentence I'd sneeze and cough and stuff was coming out of my nose ears everywhere it was disgusting so after about 15 minutes there's no way I could give a talk like that so I said let's all meditate so I had half an hour meditation altogether and afterwards I gave this beautiful talk Not a Cough not a sneeze really impressive people saw that wow is that possible he had a cold you know any stuff coming out of your nose you weren't sort of imagining this it's real you meditate you know because I had to sometimes we're lazy don't really do it unless you really want to unless you have to mostly so you'd sit there and just after a while the cold vanish and I gave us lovely fluent talk without any interruptions wow that's interesting this meditation actually works
- The haematologist who made room for kindnessStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: The year after Ajahn Brahm received a Curtin University medal, he attended the award for Professor 'Joofi' (as captioned), head of haematology at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital.…
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I remember just oh one of my heroes in Perth. It's weird having all these different types of heroes. One of them I you know some years ago I got this medal from John Curtain University you know for starting off a really good community here and supporting women. but also that the next year I went to this um medal award for professor Joofi. He was the head of hematology at the time in Charlie Gardner's Hospital. And when I went there when I went there for his awards ceremony cuz I won the the award the year before I was so inspired by him. He was a top doctor had immense sort of uh academic qualifications but you know he noticed something which was wrong in a hospital system and that was that everybody got the best chemotherapy, radiation therapy, surgery. You know what was missing? The kindness and care. I don't know the last time you've been in the hospital, but do actually people spend time talking with you, caring for you? You may be really sick in the bed and holding your hand. Sometimes people afraid to hold the hand. They might get sued or catch something. Oh, for goodness sake. That kindness is one of the best parts of therapies. And anyway, this top doctor, he was the one who decided to put aside his scientific credentials and invite uh he got a few rooms in that hospital and he invited uh invited raiki therapy, homeopath homeopathy, uh acupuncture, anything which he said was weird, which hadn't been scientific. ifically totally 100% proven. You could get there for free, you know, after you'd come out of the hospital and had some radiation therapy or whatever. Even things like reflexology, you know, foot massage. I remember talking to him. And he said the reason he was doing that, you know, at the time there's no real scientific evidence that it was going to help, but just he knew if you went into a hospital and you were just almost like unfortunately people don't have the time to do anything better. Treated a bit like a robot, just a client, not a person. But then in this place afterwards, you could be treated like a person. Somebody was being kind to you, just gave you a foot massage. And that kindness is so important. And that kindness was having a huge effect on the recovery rate of those people. People were caring for them, not just giving them a sort of radiation therapy and then moving on to the next person. They had time for you. And that was really important. It took away their fear. The results were that people got much better results. The healing rates improved and he made that sort of little sacrifice of risking his reputation by doing something which wasn't proven. What happened in the end? So he got a prize for that.
- The heart that remembered the murderStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Girl ~10–11 gets heart transplant; recurrent nightmare of being attacked and killed. Mother traces donor — murdered prostitute. Dream details match; police question suspect; he…
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there was a few stories of people who had heart transplants and They Carried some sort of memories of the previous owner of the heart there's one amazing story is a young girl had a heart transplant he must be only about 10 or 11 years of old and after the operation very good success when she was sent home afterwards so she started having nightmares recovered nightmares the same scene in The Nightmare all the time so she told her mommy her dream was that she was attacked in a dark Street and killed and murdered and it was so recurrent that her mother sort of went to the doctor and said there's something weird going on here my child has got the same dream night after night and she wakes up screaming and of course the doctor said oh it's just the trauma of the operation you know it's a very heavy operation it might have done something to the play but she'll get over it just forget about it take another Panadol or something I shouldn't say things like that I get trouble with the doctors in this audience but usually say if it doesn't go away within two weeks come back again we do some more tests but I'll being cheeky but I get away with that but anyway it didn't go away so she took it further so it kept on recurring again so that she she had some contacts in the hospital so she did a little bit of U uh suppose it's illegal improper searching to find out where this heart came from and she found out that the heart had actually come from a prostitute who had been killed and murdered and when she heard that she went to the police station and told all the whole story this is a dream of my daughter I just found out the heart came from a murdered person does her memory in dream match any of the situation only the circumstances of the murder and the police people they investigated the situation where the original owner of the heart was killed it matched and the information they got from this girl after you know she had a heart transplant the information she got from her dreams was enough for the police to identify a suspect question him and he confessed they caught him very weird and strange thing there was enough memories left in that heart to actually to find the killer of the old heart
- The temporal bell that woke her from comaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Angie Marksfield's auntie describes deep coma as blackness; what brought her out was sound — like the tickling of a temple/temporal bell.
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Angie Marksfield was there and her auntie would tell the story when she was in a coma. She went in a coma. She never told me exactly why she was in that coma but really really deep in a coma and obviously she came out of it. But her story of how she came out the first time was fascinating, like a firsthand description of what it's like and what happens. And she said she was in such a dark dark place, a blackness. And what brought her out was like sound. She thought it was a tickling of a of a uh a temporal bell
- The two arrowsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: The Buddha's simile: when you suffer, it is as if two arrows strike you — the physical arrow and the mental arrow. The physical arrow (sickness, losing your job, criticism,…
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that was a great simile of the two arrows. He said that it's like, when you're suffering, when you're in pain, when there is a difficulty in your life, There is like two arrows inside in you. The physical arrow and the mental arrow. He said that the physical arrow, you can't do much about. Disappointments happen in life, sicknesses happen, It doesn't matter just how much brown rice and veggies and exercise you do, you get sick. As for me, some of food I eat; is all types of rubbishy food. Now every morning, one thing I really like in my tea is sweetened condensed milk. Or if not that, the long-life milk. That's why I'm healthy because it's says "long-life" milk! That's the secret of living a long age you drink a lot of long-life milk. It says on the package, "long-life" milk. (Laughter) But sickness would come to me, I'm not gonna avoid it forever, you know, we all get sick from time to time. So, when you get sick, that's the physical arrow. When you lose your job, that's the physical arrow. When something happens to you, people criticise you, that's the physical arrow. He said "We're gonna accept that. That's the part of life." Each one of us will meet that from time to time. Number one. Look, it's not your fault. It doesn't matter what you do, you're gonna get sick, you're gonna lose your job, you're gonna have arguments in your relationships, some of you gonna get divorced, some of your kids are gonna just, you know, call you all sorts of terrible names. That's life. It happens. But the mental arrow is just what we add to that with our mind.
- Why did I get shot?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A man drafted into the Thai army, wounded in a border skirmish, comes to Ajahn Chah asking what bad karma caused it — did he kill someone in a past life, mistreat his parents?…
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To understand that part I'm going to digress now onto the story of the soldier. This is a powerful story which happened when I was a young monk in Thailand where I got a lot of my stories and understanding from. A young man was drafted into the Thai Army and he was wounded in a battle on the border. Even though there was not supposed to be any battles going on, there were still struggles in the border, both the Burmese border, the Laotian border, the Cambodian border which wasn't being reported for diplomatic reasons, but there was still firefights went on. He was wounded and so he had to leave the army and he came to see his teacher Ajahn Chah, with his arm bandaged and he said “oh I just had really really bad kamma because I got wounded in the battle, why did it happen to me?”, and Ajahn Chah looked at him and said, “what do you mean, why did it happen to you? You're a soldier! That's what happens to soldiers - you shoot bullets at other people, you can expect other people to shoot bullets at you, and some of those bullets would hit
- Working backwards from the solutionStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Some ten years earlier Ajahn Brahm attended a high-powered think tank in the Whitsunday Islands, with Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan, Anna Bligh, the…
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One of those conferences I went to several years ago was very high power conference and at the time I think I don't know exactly the year because I live in the present moment but I know it was when Kevin Rudd was the prime minister cuz he was at this conference together with Julia Gillard and Wayne Swan and uh the premier of Victoria at the the the time and also Anna Bllye from Queensland. All these very highprofile also had a representative from the Iranian uh revolutionary guards. How they got him into this country, I don't know, but very highprofile people on this think tank in the Wit Sunday Islands. And the presentation I always remember was on climate change but they looked upon it a totally different way. This is actually the thinking outside the box type of stuff with the hope not just the anxiety with a terrible situation. what they said. The uh moderator of this one panel started saying, "Well, this is the scenario. Just imagine this. A huge chunk of the uh Greenland uh Greenland glacia fell off, created a tsunami, and just wiped out half of New York port." And so they had to um solve this problem and they did reducing greenhouse gases to zero. So they did it. Okay. So this is where you start. You start from the end. Now I want all you experts to think backwards. How did we get there? How did we reduce everything to zero? And that was actually that thinking backwards thing and I thought what a wonderful this was just over 10 years ago. I knew know that you know why I I got that timeline correct because when it came to my little problem my little problem was how can we give full ordination to bikunis? That was just over 10 years ago. You know what I did? I said, well, I I talked with Ajin Bumali. Okay, suppose let's imagine that we've got full auto ordination for Pikunis. We solved the problem. How do we get there? Let's work backwards from the solution. And of course, that's what we did.
- “Your meditation can't be that good”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At the Serpentine doctor's surgery a monk sees an advert for another meditation group and suggests the doctor's people come to theirs instead. The reply: your meditation group…
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I think one of the monks was visiting the uh the local doctor in Serpentine. And when they were visiting that local doctor in Serpentine, they saw an advert there for a meditation group in Serpentine. Not our group, but another group. And he said, "Well, why don't you come to our meditation group?" And he said, "Well, your meditation group can't be that good because you monks are always coming into this surgery for help from the doctor.