Declining Amnesty International's dinner

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• A hundred cakes and nowhere to sleep

  In brief: For a Serpentine monastery fundraiser, about a hundred home-baked cakes fill the tiny Magnolia Street kitchen. Ajahn Brahm's bedroom is…

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  Actually, you know, the worst suffering I ever had when I first came here just to that was this house in Magnolia Street, North Perth where we first lived. Cuz one day they were doing they were doing this fundraiser for our the monastery down at Serpentine. They decided to have a cake stall. So one Friday night it's only a small house in a really small house in North Perth. And everybody brought these cakes, you know, home baked cakes and they put them you know, in the kitchen. Maybe about 100 cakes there. You know what a freshly baked baked cake uh smells like? And everybody went home after the Friday evening. And I went into the room right next to the kitchen. That was my bedroom where I slept. You couldn't sleep. You had all this aroma freshly baked cakes in your room and you couldn't eat any of them and it's really unfair. And all you could smell all night is like the smell of freshly baked cakes. That was the most tortured evening I ever had. You can smell them. You can't eat them.

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• May you get whatever you want as soon as you want it

  In brief: Middle-Eastern friend: second-worst curse is fleas of a thousand camels in your armpits; worst is getting whatever you want immediately.

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  two worst curses in the Arab world. And the worst curse you can second worst curse you can give to somebody was to wish somebody "May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits." [laughter] The fleas of a thousand camels infest your armpits. That's pretty gross. But worse than that was "May you get whatever you want as soon as you want it

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• Six months alone, and the kangaroos ate the pizza

  In brief: Sometime between 2000 and 2008 his year's sabbatical shrank to six months. Instead of touring, he stayed in a hut in the Serpentine forest…

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  I spent six months without seeing any human being, without talking to anybody else. What had happened was, I was supposed to have a sabbatical, a year off, but then it, one thing led to another, I can only have six months off, so you go anywhere in the world, where would you like to go for six months? I could go touring here, visiting this monastery or that monastery, but I said, "No." Why do people always have to seek for happiness somewhere else? Why can't I find that happiness right where I am in that monastery where I worked so hard to build it up? So I said, “No, I'm not going to seek for happiness contentment anywhere else,” I could go wherever I wanted to, but I decided to find the best happiness and truth and freedom and wisdom right here. So I had a hut in the forest in Serpentine and I stayed there for six months, never went anywhere except deeper and deeper inside.. And it was arranged that we had a box…, actually where's that box now? The box which…, I think it's over… Okay, still is there somewhere, anyway, we had a little box there, and in the morning, at a certain time, about 10:30, one of the monks would actually put my bowl with food in the box, and I'd know the time they were coming, so I knew to be in my hut, and afterwards I will go to the box, open it up, eat the food, and then wash the bowl, put it in the box there for the next day. So I never, it's much better than Uber Eats, it was “Monk Eats". I never got charged, I never saw anybody. So there I was, and they knew I was alive because they see my bowl, and the food was eaten, so and it could have been the Kangaroos, I suppose, eating the food, but no it was me, although sometimes, those kangaroos…, you know, that they're really really really smart, and they soon found out that I was, you know, in that hut, and sometimes you'd leave your food outside on the veranda, it's a walking path, and leave the bowl there just for a few minutes to go inside to get something 'cause I liked eating on the veranda at first, and you know what happened? You find a kangaroo with it's head inside my bowl, (laughs) taking the first choice of food before I ever got to it! And so I from that time I decided to, to eat inside my hut, and so even inside, but, you know, the window was open and the kangaroo will come up onto my path, and look at me through the window, and ahh… a poor kangaroo, so you know, you felt sort of some compassion for this poor.. They had plenty of grass, but then, I started by putting some healthy food outside, I remember, like a carrot, or some…, but you know, they weren't interested in that, you know the food they liked the most when I was on retreat? Pizza! Honest! (laughter) Like…, it was, I don’t know if it's healthy for them, but, you know, that's what the Kangaroos decided they wanted to eat, see a little kangaroo with a little pizza in their mouth, they loved that

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• Three months without looking at a girl

  In brief: One of Ajahn Chah's own stories: as a lusty 18- or 19-year-old novice in a town monastery, he resolved that for the three-month rains…

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  one of Ajahn Chah's stories was that when he was a young, lusty novice, you-know, 18, 19 years of age, with all the hormones running through him, he wanted to become a monk, but, obviously, he saw young Thai girls, and he would have lust towards them. And so for three months, during a period of what we call Rains Retreat, the time when I don't come here, Sister Vayama doesn't come here. Those of you who have been coming here for a long time know for three months we always go back into our monasteries. He was staying in a town monastery, so for three months, he decided he would not look at any girl at all. He would keep his eyes down, and not even look at anybody, thinking that that type of restraint would overcome his lust. So for three months, he refused to even look at a girl. And he said what happened, for those three months he was fine, but after his resolution was completed, the first girl he looked at he went crazy with lust.

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