# The ants who buried the sugar cube

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Story
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-ants-bury-sugar-cube
- Themes: cooperation, community, non-self, nature
- Life situations: teamwork, workplace competition, community

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

A visitor at the Serpentine monastery puts a hard sugar cube on top of an ants' nest to test them. Instead of breaking it up, the ants excavate beneath it day by day until it sinks below the surface, then cover it with earth — engineering by a community that had never seen a sugar cube.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

Years and years ago, at our monastery in Serpentine, there were many ants' nests, there was this one visitor, he decided to give the ants an intelligence test. Cause you know, the ants' nest, he put a sugar cube on top of the ants' nest. The ants love the sugar. It's like one of these hard cubes, I wonder what they would do with this. Would they break it up to take it into the small holes, to take it into the centre of their nest? What would they do? And he really couldn't believe their intelligence their engineering prowess. What the ants did, they excavated under the sugar cube. So day by day, the sugar cube got lower and lower and lower and lower. When the top got below the surface, they put the earth on top again. Now it's exactly the same way, I think the Vietcong buried the American tanks, during the Vietnam war, they actually drew them underground. That was just a community of ants, who've never seen a sugar cube before, ever.

## Teaching point

Working together — always 'us', not 'me' — achieves what no individual can.

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

Given a sugar cube too big for their tunnels, the ants didn't squabble over it; day by day they dug beneath it until it sank, then covered it over. No single ant could have managed that. Offices, families and faiths often waste their energy pulling against each other. Think in terms of us rather than me, and heavy problems start to sink.

## Source

- [Putting Meaning Into Life | Ajahn Brahm | 03-12-2010](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG5IadQxhvE) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 36:42 to 37:45: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wG5IadQxhvE&t=2202s

Other tellings of this story:

- [Getting Along with Difficult Family Members | Ajahn Brahm | 18 June 2021](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SKiukqiAK8) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 27:51 to 29:15: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SKiukqiAK8&t=1671s
- [Real Happiness | Ajahn Brahm | 22 November 2024](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKpp1Z-6kA0) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 34:08 to 35:20: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vKpp1Z-6kA0&t=2048s