They had all watched a hanging

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• The tribe that praises the wrongdoer

  In brief: Ajahn Brahm recounts an email about a tribe untouched by other cultures: when someone does wrong — steals or hits someone — he stands in…

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  somebody sent me this interesting email the other day and it was some tribe which has you know been totally untainted by other cultures that in this try when anybody makes a mistake or does anything wrong or bad like steals or hit somebody or he stands in the center of this circle and all the members of the tribe stand around him he's done something bad but do they punish him no for two or three days he has to stand in the middle and they all tell him wonderful things about himself what a great person he is for three days when he's done something wrong

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• The man sentenced for having a cold

  In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls Samuel Butler's satire Erewhon, read as a student: a society where what we call crime is treated as sickness needing…

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  there's a wonderful book written written over a hundred years ago it's called "Erewhon," by Samuel Butler. And apparently, that really influenced the great British playwright George Bernard Shaw. It changed the way he looked at some of these social problems and the reason why it was a very effective argument against the way we treat "criminals," or people who've done harm, with punishment, was that it used the satire. It envisaged a society in which, what we call crime today, is looked upon as being a sickness and therapy, therapy, therapy is the only response to crime. If somebody steals, they go and see a doctor. If somebody rapes, that's looked upon as being a sickness. Punishment is not really looked at at all. But somehow, a rehabilitation of trying to work out and remedy that glitch in human nature. But, when it came to health matters, if you were sick and ill, that was because you were careless and you were punished. Part of that book, a chapter which I will always remember, was of a court scene in which there was a poor man who had a cold. And when he had a cold (there's many colds going around right now [directed at audience], there's a cough already, you'd be in trouble in this society), because he had a cold he was in the dock, charged with being sick. And because he was sniffling, he had no defense and so the judge pronounced him guilty of having a cold and he, before he gave judgment, uh, sentence sorry, the punishment, he said, "This is not the first time you appeared before me, you were here last week or three weeks ago with a cold. I warned you then, if you don't eat better, take better care of your health, let go of your stress, it's your responsibility to be healthy and you have been negligent, and your cold is causing a danger to other people! You're being heedless, you're not caring for others, you're spreading your germs to other people, that's not appropriate, you should be punished: three years in jail for having a cold, being a repeat offender!

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• Telling the kids what their dad got up to

  In brief: Visiting his brother, Ajahn Brahm tells his young nephew and niece about all the naughty things their father did at their age; fascinated,…

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  I did that to my brother once I was visiting him he had you know a son and a daughter they're about you know six and eight or something and I still my brother was doing something else in his house and I started talking about to my nephew and niece what my brother got up to when he was their age all the naughty things he did and they were really fascinated tell us some more about our dad because he never tells us that foreign and then he came into the room he said what are you telling my children I've been doing all these years trying to teach them not to do those things which he did himself and I knew because I was there at the time

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• The boy who stretched his seedlings

  In brief: One of Ajahn Brahm's first meditation teachers recalls planting seeds with his father at five or six. After three days with nothing…

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  there's a story of one of my first meditation teachers in Thailand he told me I usually tell this on the meditation Retreats not usually on a Friday night he told me when I was starting out my meditation career that when he was a young boy in Thailand that his father gave him some seeds to grow in the garden he was only about five six years of age and this was the first time he grew anything so this little five or six put his little seeds with the help of his father underneath the ground underneath the soil and he would water them every day after 3 or 4 days he saw no result said where are my plants where my flowers is three days now can't see anything his father had to tell him that when you have seeds when the water gets to them they germinate they split the seed a little green shoe comes out it's probably under the ground right now pushing its way to the surface just wait for a little while and you'll see a shoot be patient and he took his father's advice and fortunately at the end of two days a tiny green shoot was appearing above the Earth so so he decided to water those flowers two times a day he was getting excited and those flowers grew grew grew until about 2 in high and that's when he lost his patience he decided to stretch them to make them grow faster and he killed every one of them but he learned a wonderful lesson you can't stretch nature nature takes its time to grow

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