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Analogy · Ajahn Brahm

Aircraft of the future — pilot and dog

As told by Ajahn Brahm in Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm | 13 April 2019

1 min read

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

aircraft of the future where in the cockpit they'd only have two beings in the cockpit, the pilot and the dog. That's all that be allowed in the cockpit. The job of the pilot, the only job he'd have would be to train or be sorry, the only job the pilot had would be to feed the dog and keep the dog happy. The only job of the dog would be to bite the pilot if he touches anything

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 11:28 (to 12:04)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

The cockpit of the future, an airline magazine joked, will hold a pilot and a dog. The pilot feeds the dog; the dog bites the pilot if he touches the controls. Meditation is like that. The mind settles automatically if you stop interfering. Thinking is disturbance. Make peace with this moment, step back, and watch.

In brief (our summary)

Airline magazine gag: future cockpit has only a pilot and a dog. Pilot's job is to feed the dog; dog's job is to bite the pilot if he touches the controls. Same with the mind — stop interfering with an automatic peaceful process.

Teaching point

Meditation works when you stop touching the controls.

When this story may help

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in Guided Meditation | Ajahn Brahm | 13 April 2019 · 2019-04-13 · ▶ watch from 11:28 to 12:04 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

7 other tellings of this story

Caption notes: YouTube auto-captions with machine-added punctuation; words left exactly as captioned.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

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    walking meditation uh this was in Bangkok many years ago that I heard this sound like it was a long distance away like miles away and it was it was my name no I don't promise another the name I'm known as now but the real name is Brahma wongsa and I heard this sound like from a really long distance brahmawang so Obama Wong so and I thought this was really weird because it felt so distant for me but then I just paid attention to it instead of my feet walking and I found out it was another mug was shouting in my ear hole

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  • Hay Street Mall — two hours outside Time Zone

    In brief: Years ago Ajahn Brahm sat two hours on the cold pavement of Hay Street Mall right in front of a noisy Time Zone arcade, no cushion,…

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    Hay Street mouth many years ago and hey Street mile we met it sat down on the cold pavement no cushions about for two hours as right in front of a shop called time zone and that was really noisy but I wanted to test out what I told others can you do yourself and of course that was wonderful you could I'm not honest so you could do that it's not that hard we imagine a bubble around you and you're in that bubble and the sounds are kind of outside they're not in your space you can hear the sounds but you don't listen to them listen to them what's that song what they saying what they're doing if you don't give them attention and importance then they are just a different type of sound they're just noise at a distance but they don't really affect you and they don't disturb you

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  • Stupid feet

    In brief: In Ajahn Chah's monastery the monks went barefoot through the jungle, and the Western monks were always stubbing toes and piercing their…

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    as a monk with ajanta we didn't wear shoes or sandals a lot of the time and so walking through the jungles we were always stubbing our toes or piercing our souls of our feet with the the roots and other stuff in the forest we always had our our feet bandaged with so many Band-Aids saw this he said why on Earth are westerners always cutting themselves on the forest floor because they didn't wear any shoes and he said it's because you westerners have got stupid feet I never realized you could apply the word stupid to a foot but it was actually absolutely accurate always up in our head thinking about the meaning of life while we're training on thorns and stuff and and piercing our feet and making them bleed it was stupid feet

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  • Dewdrop on the green hills nimitta

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    I remember once uh seeing a scenery in the first stage of these nitas breath was very peaceful very joyful then disappeared and saw this beautiful scenery Rolling Green Hills nice trees a little river in the valley all very delightful but to take it further I did notice on on one of the trees on the tip of one of the leaves there was a Jew drop which was sparkling in the sunshine and uh intuitively I knew that's where I had to put my attention and so you just focus in like zooming in on Google

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