Opening the car boot (and the nun loophole)

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• The ATM that gave twenty euros

  In brief: A former monastery postulant studying in Germany adopts a campus ATM that 'gurgled' at him, sends it loving-kindness every day, and one…

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  The guy who was an Anagarika for one year at Serpentine Monastery Went over to Germany to complete his degree first day at a University campus he walked past the ATM machine This is a great story, and you may actually get some benefit from this, if you understand it and practice it properly So, he walked past the ATM machine and he said the ATM machine emitted a sound, he called it a gurgling type sound very difficult to define, but it made a sound just as he passed by and he took that as a welcome from the ATM machine to the campus And so from that time on that was his ATM, that's where he did all his transactions, and because he had been by a monk like me A little bit weird and crazy but, he would always give Loving-Kindness to the ATM machine. "May you be happy and well, may you never run out of cash may you're clients never hit you and swear at you when they find they've got no balance, may, you now, robbers never tear you out of a wall with a four wheel drive or blow up trying to get the cash may you live at peace and happy" that sorta stuff He'd talk to the ATM, regarded it as a personal being with consciousness and was always kind to it! And he swore to me, this actually happened, having his lunch one afternoon, on a bench, maybe about five or ten meters away from the ATM. No one had gone close to that ATM machine for about 20 minutes, he was there he saw it, no one had gone close to it! and he was sitting there, having his lunch, and he heard the gurgling sound again, the machine gurgled at him and he looked around, and he saw a twenty euro note come out of the machine (Laughs) no one had put in any credit card, punched in any numbers for twenty minutes it got twenty euros. And he went to the machine with disbelief, but it was there and he pulled it out: "does this belong to anybody?" no one claimed it but of course they wouldn’t claim it because it was the ATM's gift to It's friend

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• Apologising to the iPhone

  In brief: A supporter hits his failing old iPhone, remembers he is a Buddhist, apologises to it and wishes it peace — and it starts working at once.

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  one very, uhh, strong supporter was telling me That his old iPhone was not working, you know, sometimes you're mobile phones you used them so much and they get a bit passed it, but you know, he was just, you know he was trying to live a simple life so instead of replacing it, get a new one, he kept the old one. And when it wasn't working he banged it, he hit it and of course it still didn't work and then he realised: "I'm a Buddhist that's not the way you should do things" so he apologized to his iPhone "I'm sorry iPhone, I should not have hit you, I really apologize, I will never do that again, I wish you all peace and happiness" and he said it started working immediately.

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• The monk who fixed NASA's computer

  In brief: NASA in Houston can't get a new multi-million-dollar supercomputer to work; experts flown in first class all fail. A Thai engineer…

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  The old story about that small company over in Houston called NASA. Small company. NASA. They were installing a new supercomput in their offices. Cost millions, tens, hundreds of millions of dollars. The main number cruncher for the whole of NASA. And once they, you know, joined all the bits and pieces together and installed it, they could not get it to work. They could not. But have you ever tried sort of a computer, something goes wrong and you can't make it work? It's really frustrating. But if it's NASA, that's, you know, it cost them millions every day that the computers down. So they got all these experts from the whole of North America, all the, you know, the big professors from all these universities. They flew them down first class to Houston. Nice hotel. Please fix the computer up. This is an emergency. And doesn't matter who they got down. No one could fix it. I'm not exaggerating the story. This is absolutely true. No one could fix this computer. And so they one of the um the workers there, he was a tie engineer. And this tie engineer said, "Well, if we can't fix it, I remember the story. If we can't fix it, perhaps it may be something supernatural. And I know the very person who could fix it if it's supernatural. There's a monk staying here, a forest monk in the Thai temple in Houston. And the advantages of monks is we don't cost anything. Give us a cup of tea and we'll fix anything for you. Good value for money. So anyway, they got this monk into the uh computer room, the main computer room, this huge mainframe computer, and then all he did was meditate. He was a great loving kindness monk. Bit of chanting, that's all. And the computer, honestly, I'm not exaggerating, after he finished his chanting and his meditation, this big mainframe computer worked perfectly. They couldn't believe it. They didn't know one didn't worry why it was working perfectly. They were just so pleased it could now work. And what can you give a monk? He doesn't need anything. So apparently what they did give him, we found this out afterwards when he went to San Francisco and one of the monks there met him at the airport. One of the monks who met him at the airport said, "Look, can we just look at your passport to make sure you got a proper visa?" and they looked at the visa and they couldn't believe what they saw. His visa was a diplomatic visa with no expiry date. He come in and out of United States as many times as he want whenever he wants for the rest of his life. And this was a time of homeland security and he was just a forest monk. Sometimes these forest monks the immigrations and customs are a bit dubious about you. When I was uh traveling through United States a few years ago, they looked at me, I only have my my bag. That's my baggage. Said, "Where's the rest of your baggage, sir?" said, "This is all I have." He said, "Well, what's underneath your robe?" And what this customs agent said, we said, "Is there a suicide belt under Europe?" Because in those days people would use suicide bolts. And so I opened up my R said, "No, it's suicide belt. It's only fat." And that's when the customs officer said, "Same thing." Did you get that story? Suicide belt. No, it's only fat. Same thing. But anyway, that was many years ago, so it hasn't gone off yet. I'm still alive. But anyway, he fixed his computer and he got a and I often I said this morning, it's probably true that the reason they gave him a diplomatic visa with no expiry date was not just to make his life easy, but if they needed to fix the computer in a rush, they could get him straight away. He wouldn't need a visa.

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• The mosquitoes were my teachers

  In brief: As a young monk in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm could not include mosquitoes in his loving-kindness chant; when he finally let one bite him out…

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  Being in Northeast Thailand, we'd always call the mosquitoes "Ajahn mosquito"... [laughter] ...because I learned so much from those damn mosquitoes. [laughs] That's what I thought at the time, those mosquitoes. Because even when we just do loving kindness. For those of you who are Buddhists, you know that we spread love and kindness to all people, all beings, all genders, no matter what you are or who you are. May all beings be happy and well. However, as a young man being a monk in Thailand, I just could not do that. It's impossible. I did the best I can. I used to chant, "May all beings be happy and well, except mosquitoes." [laughter] Ajahn: "May all beings be free from suffering, but not those mosquitoes. They don't deserve, what they've done to me." [laughs] I'm sure that if ever you spread loving kindness, you've also got exceptions. [laughs] But it didn't work well when I had exceptions, so I learned how to learn from those mosquitoes to be kind to them. Sometimes, I was so kind to those mosquitoes I let them bite me. They would land on my hand. I said, "Come on, mosquito, you can bite me. The door of my heart is open to you. It's only a little bit of blood. I know that you need this to have your dinner. And I like my dinner as well, especially as a monk. I know this is your dinner, so have something to eat. Do you know what those mosquitoes did? Sometimes difficult people and difficult beings are like this. They take advantage of you. They put their nose into the skin, and it's irritating. So you just endure that. It's only a few seconds. But these mosquitoes, that was just an exploratory drill. They took their nose out, walked a few steps, and tried somewhere else. [laughter] Ajahn: They were fussy. You have three or four bites just from one mosquito! They were taking advantage of my kindness. [chuckles] That's just the nature of mosquitoes. It doesn't matter. I have plenty of blood, and I learned a lot from that.

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