Stories for things going wrong
3 Buddhist wisdom stories for things going wrong from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Dog poo under the mango treeAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile: walking home from the temple you tread in dog poo. Don't scrape it off; take it home and scrape it off under your mango tree. A year later the mangoes are sweeter — and…
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it is the simile of coming to the temple and when you walk home you tread in a big pile of dog and what do you do with dog when it gets on your shoes number one do not absolutely forbidden in buddhism breaking the precept of wisdom you don't scrape it off your shoes you must always take it home with you and only scrape it off when you get to your garden and scrape it off under the flowers or the apple tree or the mango tree whatever fruit you like that's where you scrape off the dog poo because one year later your mango tree would have so many more mangoes they'll be much sweeter than ever before and whenever you bite into that mango and the juice drips down your cheek you must always remember what you're really eating and it's true you're eating dog that's where it came from but it's all been transformed into anger
- The corpse in the elevatorStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Funeral directors collecting a body from a top-floor old apartment find the gurney will not fit the stairs or elevator, so they hold the corpse upright between them. Murphy's…
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there's no way you can get sort of like the the little it was not coffin yet a little um trolley they put the dead person on so strap him in there and just you know to try and take him take him down the stairs but even in the elevator the elevator was too small and he was on the top story so what to do that is it'd be it'd be like some comedy show but this was real life you know real life is much more funny than anything they can invent on the TV so what they did you know they decided well the only thing to do is actually just carry him down ourselves so that they forgot about the trolley that just his two Funeral Directors you know in Black they look pretty sort of weird already and with the dead person in between just holding on to him standing and of course it's one of these though one of these old apartment blocks where everybody knew one another so they knew this guy has died so top story about six stories or something down to the ground floor where the horse was waiting they were praying please nobody pressed the button halfway down but of course there is some law which is even the most powerful law in the whole universe which you can rely upon it's called Murphy's Law it's something can go wrong it does go wrong so the elevator stopped on the third floor halfway down they couldn't do anything about it and when it does open there's this little old lady who'd also lived in the apartment block for a long time and you can imagine what she saw this guy who she knew was dead standing between these two guys in Black and my friend the funeral director he said we don't know how this happened but we lost control of him and he started Falling Towards the old woman she just dropped out what should we do next so they thought they had to say we can do they they grabbed on the guy again and pressed the button and they just hope they didn't have another customer they ran up the stairs afterwards and she was okay she was a bit shocked but you know when it can happen it does happen
- The psychiatric team's flat batteryStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Several years ago a woman arrived one evening at Bodhinyana still wearing a hospital wristband from Bentley Hospital's psychiatric unit. Ajahn Brahm said she needed to go back;…
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It happened once that there was a lady who came uh in the evening to Bodhinana Monastery. This was several years ago. And unfortunately she and I could see from her wrist she still had that tag they put on the wrist. Uh she was in Bentley Hospital with no psychiatric problems. And so I recognized her and I said, "Well, you know, you really do need to go back to hospital." She said, "No, you told me to come here on the psychic plane." So I realized there's a problem here. And so she didn't want to leave. So one thing which I did know there was some people who worked for the they called it the PET team at the time psychological emer psychiatric emergency team. So we called them. Trouble is you know we lived down in Serpentine. It's a long way away. So by the time they came, it took a while to settle her down. But then uh when they arrived at the gate, they asked me how she be been behaving. And at one time she threw a cup of tea at me. I didn't mind the cup breaking, but what a waste of tea. But nevertheless, I told him that I said, "Oh, if we have anybody who's uh got psychiatric problems and was also violent, we have to call the police." So the only police station, you know, which was there at the time was over in Armadale. So we called them. I said, "You will come." And this is our local police station in Armadale. And they didn't know the way to Bodhinana Monastery. They went by Serpentine Dam, which is twice as long as it should be. And so we're waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting and waiting. But then when the police actually did come, the psychiatrists, they know the stuff about the mind, but sometimes they lose what we call their common sense because they left their headlights on all the time. And so their car was actually had no no electricity in the the batteries anymore. And so when with the police they asked this lady to go back into hospital, they could not take her. They didn't have any power in their car. And the rules for the police, the police couldn't take them. That was against their rules. So they were stuck. But fortunately, we talked the police into taking her into the hospital.