# Ajahn Chah pushed their car out of the mud

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Story
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-chah-pushed-car-out-of-mud
- Themes: Ajahn Chah, humility, rumour, psychic powers
- Life situations: myth-making, helping strangers

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

Devotees stuck in mud meet a forest monk who helps push the car out — it is Ajahn Chah. Later the story mutates into 'we've seen his psychic powers' even though the helper was just humble muscle.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

pushed their car out of the mud now that's a humble monk who doesn't mind getting wet who can actually help other people doesn't matter if you're a big monk or big abber you can push the car and get mud and wet and soaked that's what a real is they were very very impressed of the real compassion of a monk so they didn't need to get wet but then it was only about couple hundred meters to the hall where they get to give the talk and there they saw a and sha sitting there completely dry not a speck of mud on him and they thought wow a Char left his body or made a double body like in The Matrix and actually pushed our car out out of compassion not only is it compassion this guy's got psychic powers we've seen it

## Teaching point

Humility gets rewritten as magic when people want a miracle.

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A forest monk helped push devotees' car out of the mud. When they saw Ajahn Chah later, spotless, they decided he had used psychic powers. The real helper, his look-alike cousin, still says it was him, and nobody believes it. We cling to what flatters our pride. Be willing to hear the plain truth, even about your teacher.

## Source

- [Higher Criticism | Ajahn Brahm | 16-03-2007](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y03ofPco54M) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 23:08 to 24:07: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y03ofPco54M&t=1388s