Twenty minutes to cry in a Bangkok temple

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• The noisy airport prayer room

  In brief: Delighted to find a meditation and prayer room at Perth Airport, Ajahn Brahm sits down to meditate — and the room is filled with security…

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  I once went into one of the chapels and meditation rooms in the airport to try and get a bit of peace and quietness to do some meditation. Of course after only about 30 seconds "please do not leave your bags unattended paging Mr. so and so, your flight is about to board' and all these other announcements which were going on in the quiet room as there's noises anywhere else.

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• The silence of Westminster Abbey

  In brief: As a young man in London, whenever Ajahn Brahm was confused he would go into the great cathedrals — the last time Westminster Abbey — to…

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  again I remember this story that I used to know whenever I was confused you I used to go to these great churches they had these beautiful cathedrals in London when I was young and I remember the last time I ever went into a cathedral in this was in England in London was actually Westminster Abbey this huge cavernous uh place where I could just go and just sit down and be quiet outside was all the noise of the traffic in London you go inside it was just absolutely s you can sit down relax and find answers to any problems you didn't need to be told you just need to be relaxed and be still and the last time I went in there I was very very upset I must admit because I went in there there was a refuge of silence and peace you know my little pyramid in London where I can get above everything the jungle of people and traffic and noise but then when I went in there they had just a week or two before installed a PA system throughout the whole complex having all these announcements and sermons and stuff and so what the silence had disappeared and I thought that was sacr because the best the most sacred part of that old ancient building was the silence and it was not there anymore and to this day I thought that that was one of the great reasons why they had those immense Cathedrals because they were celebrating and worshiping silence

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• Two bad bricks in the wall

  In brief: Building the broke new monastery at Serpentine, the ex-physicist monk lays his first brick wall with painstaking perfectionism — then sees…

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  The story of the two bad bricks in the wall, twenty six years ago, twenty seven years ago when we moved to Serpentine to build that monastery down there we had no money, we were broke, and because... we owed money for the land, there were no buildings on that property. So I had to learn how to build. And I was theoretical physicist before, ok, in my head doing sums all day. Now I had to get out there and get my hands dirty and mix concrete and lay bricks and put on a roof and do plumbing. Everything we did. And even to this day, if any of you going into that main hall in our monastery, I am the builder. My name is on the building license for that. And it's still standing so that's pretty good. [LAUGHTER] So in particular, this story I had to learn how to lay bricks. Laying bricks was not a simple thing to do, it may look easy but it's so hard to get everything level. But, as most people would be I was a perfectionist. I had to make sure that brick was perfectly level before I went onto the next one. Sometimes one corner was high, you'd knock it down and another corner would go up. You knock that corner down then it would go out of line. You knock it back into line thinking it was finished, you notice one of the corners was high again. It was just one of those jobs which, where you couldn't get everything in the right place but you kept on trying until you got it. It took a long time but it didn't matter cause I wasn't being paid. So I could take however long I wanted. And when I finished that wall, that first brick wall, like anybody else you were proud, finished, you stood back to look at it and admire it, and it was only then when it was finished I noticed that two bricks were crooked. All the other bricks were straight, two bricks were crooked. So what would you do? What I did was try and scrape the mortar out so I could reset the bricks so they could be perfect. But the mortar was hard, you couldn't scrape it out. And the other monk who was with me at the time, Ajahn Jagaro, I asked him look can we afford, can we please afford some dynamite so I blow it up and start again? Bulldozer would do, push it over. Because...that spoiled the whole wall. Those two bad bricks, they ruined the whole thing. But we couldn't, I was stuck with it, we were too poor to do anything with it. So for three months, every time I went passed that wall I saw my mistakes and I felt so sad. I'd stuffed up. And the worst thing about stuffing up when you're building everybody could see it, you can't hide it. It's a big wall, out there in the open. So, every time there was a visitor, I would actually volunteer to take them around so I could, you know, take them somewhere else so they wouldn't see my mistakes. At night time I'd have nightmares about that wall. I would, I'd dream of it, because I'd really made a big mistake and everybody could see it. And it was three months, roughly, I'm not quite sure it's a long time ago now, about three months somebody else was with me and they saw that wall and they said that's a beautiful wall. And I just couldn't believe what I'd heard because for three months I'd been suffering so much with that wall and they said it's a beautiful wall. My first reaction was to ask them are you visually impaired, are you blind, did you leave your glasses in the car? Can't you see those two bad bricks, the crooked ones. And what they said next just changed much of the way I look at life and stopped a lot of inherent depression in myself. What they said was yes I can see the two bad bricks, but I can also see the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks as well. And that really hit me, because I realised for three months I was blind. All I ever saw was my two mistakes and I just could not see all the beautiful perfect bricks which I had laid. And when that guy told me what about the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks that was the first time in three months that I could actually see the bricks above, below, to the left and the right of my two mistakes. And I had to agree with the fellow, it was a beautiful wall, once I could see the whole picture.

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• Top of medicine by being silent

  In brief: A woman tells Ajahn Brahm she came top every year in medicine at Melbourne University with first-class honours because she knew how to…

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  One girl who told me she did medicine at Melbourne University top every year, first class honours because she knew how to meditate and be silent when the lecturer was speaking. Exams came make her mind absolutely silent, read the question in silence first thought which came up in her mind wrote it down, perfect answer.

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