No alcohol from sunrise to sunset — for vassa

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• The only lie in 40 years of marriage

  In brief: Don, a retired Royal Navy man and Buddhist Society member, was in Royal Perth Hospital awaiting heart bypass surgery. The night before,…

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  one of the members here his name was Don he was English he used to be in the the Royal Navy and he came to Perth in the boat and liked it so much that once he retired he came to uh to live here and he had a heart attack he was put in roal Perth Hospital put in the the F stream for having bypass surgery and I went to see him in the hospital give him a bit of a boo and just the night before his surgery his wife called me she was very very disturbed and she said I've been married to him for about 40 years now and this afternoon I lied to him for the first time and I feel terrible and so asked what happened why did you lie she said in that W there were three other beds and in his next bed all people about to have heart bypasses was Jack and you know being in the war together him two or 3 days nothing else to do you know he became quite friendly to Jack and Jack was had that heart bypass that morning and I went to see my husband in the evening and he was to have his bypass the next day and so my husband asked how's Jack how did his H how did his bypass go and I lied to him I said fine he's over in the ICU recovering it was a success when what really happened I saw Jack's wife crying her eyes out he died the bypassing didn't work and I didn't want to tell my husband that that his friend had died from the same operation my husband's going to have tomorrow I think that might have killed him and actually that because he was quite elderly he was on the edge of life and death for about two or three days he only just pulled through and to this day I I say to his wife you probably did the right thing if you'd have told the truth it might have just pushed him over the edge it might have killed him so I said in that particular case it was the right thing to do to lie so I say once every 40 years you can lie

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• Cambridge medicine — then mowing lawns

  In brief: One of Ajahn Brahm's best school friends won a place to study medicine at Cambridge, started on marijuana, progressed to heroin, was…

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  One of my best friends at school, he also went to Cambridge with me, studying medicine. Imagine getting a place in Cambridge University to study medicine. What a great start in life. Started taking marijuana. You don't control yourself. You're lost. And eventually heroin. Became an addict, got kicked out of university from stealing from the medical supplies at the uh the med school. And the last time I saw him, he was mowing people's lawns, just trying to get by. A brilliant man. And he was one of my friends. Now, when I was a young monk so in Thailand, my other friends said that you know, that he got He even knows our friend, whenever you go to our house, he would steal, steal.

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• The monk who built a women's prison

  In brief: A famous Thai monk, already housed, spent surplus donations on schools and hospitals — and, after visiting Bangkok's inhumane women's…

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  There's only one person I know who was actually a monk, a very famous monk in Thailand. He got lots of donations. Instead of losing them to build his monastery, yeah, he had a monastery, had enough rooms there. So any extra donations, he used to build schools or hospitals in Thailand. One amazing thing I was told he did, that with the donations he received, you know, he wanted to help society, so he built a women's prison in Bangkok. Now that is aid. And I thought, "What are you doing?" I can understand collecting money to build a hospital or a school or an orphanage, but a prison? And when actually I investigated it, what happened, he'd visited someone in a women's prison in Bangkok. Saw how inhumane it was. Just how harsh conditions there were for women who'd broken some law and been sentenced to jail. He thought, "There's no way I'm going to convince the government to increase or improve the facilities. So, I'm going to improve the facilities myself." Collecting some money to design and build a humane hospital a humane prison for women in Thailand. Knowing that they will get sentenced. If they're going to get sentenced, I need to give them a good jail, a humane jail. Where they can have decent facilities. And maybe a little bit of compassion to the prisoners will mean that they realize they are cared for somewhere along the line. There is some monk somewhere in Thailand who's responsible to have had them having a clean toilet and a bed to sleep on. And I thought, "What innovative aid that was?" Someone thinking outside the box. When I heard that, I thought, "Wow, what a great way." So, maybe we can have a little fundraiser to raise funds for a women's prison here in Perth. Maybe later later on we can do things like that.

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• The monkey who knocked on the monk's door

  In brief: An old monk living alone in a bamboo-and-thatch hut deep in the jungle hears a knock one night. At the door is a monkey from the forest…

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  And there was a story this old monk told me. This old monk was he told some wonderful stories. He was living by himself in a bamboo and thatch hut in the middle of the jungle many years ago. He said even one evening late at night there was a knock on his door and he who's knocking on the door. No one comes here at nighttime. And he said that when he opened the door there was a a monkey who was holding a little dead baby. a dead baby monkey in her arms. And he realized this was one of the the monkeys in the forest around him who had lost her kid. And what does the monkey know what to do? He gave it to the monk or she gave it to the monk almost asking the monk, "Can you do something to bring my baby back to life?" And the monk just, you know, looked at the the baby monk. It was dead. no possibility of reviving it. But at least did some chanting and after doing the little chanting for the baby monkey gave the little baby back to its mom and the m monkey just obviously had very wet eyes just went away. which is like how sort of people live in the forest a long time. Actually, you actually the animals get to know you and somehow other this griefstricken mother monkey thought that maybe the monk could do something but it couldn't.

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