Three months without looking at a girl

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• Stop the train as it leaves the station

  In brief: Simile: a train going 110 km/h with all its weight can't stop for an obstruction — it takes half a kilometre, which is why there are…

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  What mindfulness does is like trying to stop a train. When a train has left the station, it's going 110 kilometers an hour down the track with so much weight behind it. If the train driver tries to stops and put on the breaks because there's an obstruction on the road or on the rails in front of it, sometimes you just can't do that. It's going too fast and the momentum is too strong. A train going that fast takes maybe half a kilometer to come to a halt which is why that sometimes there are these terrible crashes when a car crosses the railway line. The driver sees it but it's going too fast to stop. This is what happens when we try to catch our lust or whatever, our anger, when it's a bit too late. It's gone too fast, the momentum is too strong, we can't stop it straight away. Many of you know that when you're in the power of lust, you can't stop just straightaway. You just can't say no I'm going to stop now. It's like a train just trying to pull on the breaks and stop immediately, it just cannot be done. But the best time to stop the train is when it's first moving out of the station. It's maybe going at one kilometer an hour and then you can put on the break, it's easy to stop it.

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• Sensual pleasure is a loan

  In brief: The Buddha's simile, as Ajahn Brahm gives it: sensual pleasure is like taking out a loan — joy at first, then the payback; and to repay it…

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  he compared such sensuality like to borrowing money, taking out a loan. Which is actually very deep and profound because when say you are watching pornography or you know getting into some sort of sensuality there's a lot of joy there at the beginning. But often we have to pay it back afterwards. And sometimes like a loan the only way you can pay it back is by taking out another loan to the pay off the original debt and the loan gets bigger and bigger and bigger until one gets into such a great financial mess, there's no way you can actually pay back your loan.

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• A hundred cakes and nowhere to sleep

  In brief: For a Serpentine monastery fundraiser, about a hundred home-baked cakes fill the tiny Magnolia Street kitchen. Ajahn Brahm's bedroom is…

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  Actually, you know, the worst suffering I ever had when I first came here just to that was this house in Magnolia Street, North Perth where we first lived. Cuz one day they were doing they were doing this fundraiser for our the monastery down at Serpentine. They decided to have a cake stall. So one Friday night it's only a small house in a really small house in North Perth. And everybody brought these cakes, you know, home baked cakes and they put them you know, in the kitchen. Maybe about 100 cakes there. You know what a freshly baked baked cake uh smells like? And everybody went home after the Friday evening. And I went into the room right next to the kitchen. That was my bedroom where I slept. You couldn't sleep. You had all this aroma freshly baked cakes in your room and you couldn't eat any of them and it's really unfair. And all you could smell all night is like the smell of freshly baked cakes. That was the most tortured evening I ever had. You can smell them. You can't eat them.

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• “That monk, he's on the gear”

  In brief: At a Buddha-statue installation in an English open prison, Ajahn Brahm is beaming as he circles the statue; one watching prisoner tells…

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  One time, I was visiting a prison in UK You know, we spend a lot of time in prison as monks, I often tell people: Visiting prisons, I always would keep a log of how many hours and minutes I spent doing community work in prison to be used as credit, in case I ever got sentenced for something (Laughs) look, I've already done about... the equivalent of about two or three months you should take that off (Laughs). But anyway, I was inside this jail, cause it was a ceremony, somebody had sweet talked the British government into putting a Buddha statue In the middle of an open prison, a big one! And you know, it's very easy for people to sponsor a Buddha statue especially inside a prison, wow, it's amazing! And so we did a installation ceremony. And for those who ever come and see some of the Buddhist rituals, one of the favourite ones is actually we go around three times flowers, candles and incense, we go around It's like an act of worship, reverence you know, it's interesting, where this comes from we don't know but they also do that in Mecca, when they go around the, whatever it's called ...the Kaaba, always go three times around, wearing white this is incredible similarities between our different traditions where they came from I don't know, but it's... that's Buddhist Anyhow... There we where, going round three times, and I was inspired I was happy, Amazing, something good being done in a prison! Not just locking people up and reenforcing how guilty they should feel but no, just something which is inspiring and I was just so happy with a big smile on my face much more than I usually have cause, you know, more inspiration and at the corner of my eye I saw these two prisoners they just got nothing to do, nothing was on the TV that night so they just hung out to see what the hell was going on with these crazy people with brown robes and a Buddha statue so just, you know, having a quick look and then I heard them, one looking to me... looking at the other prisoner and pointing to me he said: "That monk, he's on the gear" (Laughs) If you don't know what gear means you know, it's like, some sort of drug cause that's the only thing they could explain the happiness from just some medication; it's not medication! you know, it's meditation, not medication

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