The ants who buried the sugar cube

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  many years ago when I first came there's one of the members he just migrated from West Germany this was before unification at that time I think the West German economy was the best in the world beating Japan China United states there's a very very strong economy and he told me that when he when he came and worked here in Western Australia his work friends sort of said to him oh you Germans you got such a good economy because you really know how to work hard no that's not right I work much harder here in Australia than I ever worked in Germany and I asked him well why was your economy so strong he said because when I was working in Germany family. This was before unification. He said we would work cooperatively here in Australia. He said we work like this competing against each other in the same office in the same company. He said that was why we had to work so hard to be competitive to be productive. Sorry when you work together you have cooperation instead of competition you get far more success far more productivity and also you don't have this jealousy business

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• I could only see the names of the stars

  In brief: In the Cambridge Astronomical Society he learns the names of stars and constellations. In Thailand the night sky is so labelled in his…

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  when I was at University there was many societies I joined and one was the Astronomical Society always love stuff like that and I had learned the names of the stars and the constellations that you know whether it was a Galaxy or supernova or I knew all those words and when I went to Thailand and I saw the sky at night I couldn't see the Stars anymore all I could see were the names and everyone else was saying how beautiful it was and I couldn't see the beauty all I could see was like little labels next to every Star and it took me years you know I had to do this deliberately to forget the names to an act of it was an act of will so now I can look at the stars at night I don't know which one is which and I can see how beautiful they are

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• The birds queued — and punished the queue-jumper

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  to see all these birds of different sizes and species line up in a queue. Have you ever seen birds queuing? I have. And it was true. That's what they did. There are maybe eight or nine birds, maybe a dozen at the best, you know, and they were big ones, small ones, and they were sitting there just waiting until the one in front finished and then the next one would actually come in. And of course, it is fascinating. And then there was always every afternoon one bird would come in and would actually jump the queue and try and get in there first. Couldn't wait to have a bath or have a drink. Weird. But you know what the other birds would do? They would all get out of queue, jump on that Q jumper, [laughter] pick him and beat him and whatever. And that Q jumper would fly away. And then all those birds would queue up in exactly the order they were before. [laughter] It's unbelievable. Absolutely true. And so what that really did was, you know, increase your respect

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• The trail of blood into Mum's council flat

  In brief: Staying at his mother's London council tower block (a supposed 'hotbed of crime'), Ajahn Brahm is about to walk to a talk when the lift…

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  I remember when I went to visit her and stayed in that tower block for a short while I was going to give a talk in the Sri Lankan Vihara is Chiswick one day and it was not that far from where my mother lived so I wanted to walk. I enjoyed those walks in the streets of London especially in my robes. Because I was always a radical I wanted to surprise and stagger and confront people with my sartorial elegance of brown robes. But I also enjoyed having fun because people would look at me and sometimes not knowing exactly what you were dressed in these robes, these are like what people used to called bed blankets sometimes they are cross the other side of the road but I'll always take pleasure in wishing them Good Morning with a smile to an Englishman when someone actually wishes you 'Good Morning' you have to say Good Morning back. It is psychological torture for them. Being a sadist I enjoyed that. But anyhow on this particular occasion when I in the elevator when I got to the bottom as the door was open I was the only one in the elevator and as the door was opened I was confronted by an old lady who was covered with blood. It was like scene out of a movie I didn't know what had happened to her whether she has been attacked, mugged or whatever but she actually told me that she had fallen down by the flight of steps. She must have been about sixty five or seventy because she could still stand so immediately I forgot about giving a talk at any sort of Vihara it's more important I am kind and compassion; I like to practice Buddhism rather than teach it. So I forgot about the talk and I took this old lady upstairs to my mother's apartment where we bathed her wounds called the ambulance, she did have a broken leg but because of the shock she couldn't feel the pain at the time, so we bathed her, comforted her, called the ambulance but the wonderful thing which happened was that because it was an accident and because I took her into my mother's apartment very quickly, my mother left the door opened and there was a trail of blood which was leading into my mother's apartment and I was so pleased in a matter of five minutes I don't know how many people had come into my mother's apartment to find out what was going on and whether she was alright. And when they found out the reason why one of the tenants in these apartment blocks had an accident, fallen over and was wounded, it was wonderful to see the community coming together and helping one and another I was bathing the wounds because my mother doesn't like blood someone else was going to her house to actually to turn her oven off because she had something in the oven cooking and somebody was going to ring her daughter somewhere else and everybody was working together so well I thought, this is not a hot bed of crime this is a community where people cared about each other.

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