Stories for suicidal thoughts
4 Buddhist wisdom stories for suicidal thoughts from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- 'Are you the YouTube monk?'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Walking through Paddington Station on his way to teach in Oxford, Ajahn Brahm is stopped by a woman running up: 'Are you the YouTube monk? ... Yes, you are.' She tells him that…
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Last time I was in the UK, just getting off the Underground, going to Paddington station to get to Oxford where I was going to give a talk. Just walking through Paddington Station, just minding my own business. And this woman came running towards me and said, "Are you the YouTube monk?" [laughter] That's what she called me "the YouTube monk". And then, I didn't have time to answer. She looked me in the face. "Yes, you are." And then she said, "I just want to say thank you to you. You saved my life". She was going through a divorce, oh not a divorce, a separation from her long term partner. And that she got really depressed, suicidal. Doctor couldn't help, psychologist couldn't help, psychiatrists, whoever she saw, none of them could help. And then she was just at the end of her rope, as they say; And then she just managed somehow or other, to get on YouTube. And I think she got that one of my famous talks 'four ways of letting go'. And she listened to it and "wow It made so much sense". She listed about three or four that time, one after the other. She said that got her through her crisis. She told all her friends, "You must go and listen to these things as well from the BSWA, all for free." And then, afterwards, she said, "Thank you Thank you so much for saving my life."
- Interrupted by the radioStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A former caretaker of the Perth centre retired to Beverley for a peaceful life but fell into depression. He went into his shed, tied a noose to the rafter, set up the chair, and…
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he lives over in Beverly he was an old caretaker of our Center here he left to have a nice peaceful time up in Beverly and but you know we all go through difficult times he went through a depression and he got so deped pressed he actually went into his shed and tied a rope to the rafter tied a noose got the chair ready and went into the Caravan where he was saying to write his suicide note he had the he had the uh the radio one at the time just the local radio and as he was writing a suicide note you know just halfway through who would come on the radio aan brah and he said oh no I can't do anything without this m getting in the way so he ripped up his suicide now untied the rope and came and told me about it afterwards he said it's really too difficult to commit suicide you even get on the radio and stop me that's another guy I've got saved his life
- 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.
- Two crooked bricks at the Chinese universityStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Invited to the Chinese University in Sha Tin (captioned Chartin), Hong Kong, because of student suicides, he told the two-bad-bricks story — wanting to blow up a wall over two…
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they invited me to the Chinese university in Chartin and the reason was because they had lots of uh students committing suicide and that's the story I told apparently it worked many of those students the suicide rate went down said why I wanted to blow up a wall destroy it because I saw two faults how many Kids see a couple of faults and they focus on that's all they see. You can understand why you want to blow it up. You can't stand it any longer