The most beautiful thing in the toilet bowl

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• The wall that disappeared

  In brief: As a young theoretical physicist, Ajahn Brahm sits at a Zen monastery in the north of England, in a converted cowshed, told to meditate…

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  I usually bring up this experience I had when I was a lay person. when I was meditating wherever I could find a place to meditate and this was in a Zen monastery in the north of England and in this Zen monastery I didn't know what I was supposed to do they just you know in the little hall which is a converted cow shed that we sat down and we had to meditate with our eyes open it one of the first times I'd meditated with my eyes wide open I didn't know what I was supposed to do but I just meditated. But because I'd done some meditation before and I knew how to be in the present moment and stop this inner speech, as I was just with my eyes open, just being very peaceful, very calm, a strange thing happened. One of those weird experiences which show you there's more to this world than you'd thought. And at this time I was a theoretical physicist when I just looked at this wall just a whitewashed wall. Then suddenly without warning the wall disappeared. It vanished. It just wasn't there anymore. Which was so weird. One minute there was a wall solid and now there was nothing there. And of course instead of getting scared or think I was going crazy I used know what we do in Buddhism called insight. What's happening? And it soon became very clear to me that this is just the nature of the physical senses especially the sense of seeing sight. If you watch something, put your full attention on watching and what you observe doesn't move or change. It disappears. The sense of sight turns off.

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• Joke: round the meditation menu

  In brief: A beginner on retreat can't do breath meditation, so he teaches them anapanasati; that's too hard, so metta; then loving kindness; then…

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  Sometimes when they come on a retreat, they haven't done meditation before, I teach them say say breath meditation. Then after a day they say, "Oh, I can't do breath meditation." So I teach them Anapanasati. And after Anapanasati they know that's too difficult, I teach them metta meditation. They can't do metta, I teach them loving kindness. They can't do loving kindness, I teach them insight meditation. They can't do insight meditation, I teach them vipassana. They can't do vipassana meditation, I teach them letting go. They can't do letting go meditation, I teach them present moment awareness. They can't do present moment awareness, I teach them like the empty three questions meditation. They can't do the empty three questions meditation, I teach them breath meditation. By that time they forgot that's where they started.

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• The tiger that was a mouse

  In brief: Meditating alone at night deep in the Thai jungle, Ajahn Brahm hears rustling. As a Cambridge-trained scientist he assesses it: a small…

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  so I was meditating in the jungle really dark no lights had a sort of flashlight but it was you know had to conserve the power and there was no mobile phones no one took court if there was any danger there deep in the jungle alone meditating now the jungle can be really peaceful at first especially you know when they see Carters you know start to die down after Sunset you'll be very peaceful and very cool you know Tyler is a very hot country but in the forest the shade of the trees maybe it's just the oxygen which they give up gives a beautiful atmosphere it's really cool and very peaceful and so secluded hardly any disturbances at all so I was getting into some really nice deep meditation until I heard a sound there's always something in the jungle crawling around and so I was mindful as you know I've been practicing this for years I was very mindful I didn't need to open my eyes if I did I couldn't say anything it was pitched dark I just listened and and assessed I was brought up as a scientist in Cambridge University so I did some like assessment gather some data and use some reason and by the sound of this animal it was only just you know not really crushing leaves it was just a little bit of rustling in the leaves so I assessed it and said oh it's only maybe a small little animal just you know walking through the jungle nothing to be afraid of so then I started meditating again but then after another couple of minutes I realized it was coming much closer and as it was closer I could hear it more clearly and I realized no no it's not a small animal it's a medium-sized one you could tell by the way it was actually crashing the leaves and breaking the Twigs but still nothing to be really afraid of and then when it got really close wow that's not a medium-sized one that's a big one because the way it was making a noise it must be something really heavy to actually to break not tweaks but like almost like small branches and crushing the leaves on the forest floor because you can't walk in the forest without any noise there's too much undergrowth and too much leaves litter on the ground this was a big animal that was dangerous and I got really scared and I picked up my flashlight and you know the waste of time for that really was a tiger that just tell you the tiger where you were but that's how stupid you are you pick up your flashlight and you look for it where's the big tiger and then I saw it I saw it just not that far in front of me this tiny Mouse about this big that's what it was and that tiny Mouse had been making us more noise but it was my fear with an exaggerated that sound into thinking it really was a tiger

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• The noisy breather on the Sydney retreat

  In brief: On a nine-day retreat in Sydney one man breathes so loudly that a meditator complains. Ajahn Brahm explains he has a terminal tumour…

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  At meditation retreats I always remember this one man when I was teaching a Meditation Retreat in Sydney many years ago and a 9-day retreat. You know that people are supposed to be quiet when they are meditating but this man (Ajahn breathing noisily) He was breathing so heavily through every meditation sitting so much so that someone came up to me to complain Can you please tell this person to keep quiet. I am trying to meditate. He had a tumor in his nasal passages blocking both nostrils. It was terminal; the doctor had given up surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy So the doctors have abandoned him and he came to the meditation retreat as a last resort So when I told all the meditators that, they felt very embarrassed and guilty that they were complaining about somebody who got only few weeks to live. He told me that; on the last day of the retreat (Ajahn making the sound) breathing loudly again but not thinking being silent; he had a 'pop' He said he could breath again. That's what he said 'a pop' as his nasal passage cleared but only for about 5 or 10 minutes then it closed again. That was an amazing thing which happened I thought that meditation was working but he left it a bit too late. I never thought he would survive. Few years later teaching meditation in Sydney, this guy came up to me 'do you remember me?' I said 'of course I don't remember, who are you? ' As a monk I am honest He was that man. He cared with his meditation and his nose had cleared and now he was going around teaching people how to be peaceful, how to be silent. because his cancer had got into regression even though he should have been dead years ago.

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