The worst thing she'd ever done

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• “I never stopped loving you, George”

  In brief: A Cockney friend of the monastery leaves his wife of about 40 years for a much younger woman; his wife is devastated. Some years later,…

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  Just one which comes to my mind. This man, he was a good friend. He used to come to our monastery. He’s a bit of a Cockney. I was the only one who could really understand him when he came to our monastery. And, you know, after a while he decided he wanted to leave his wife. And he found another a girl much younger than him and he divorced his wife, went to live with this other girl. You know, he broke up. His wife was devastated. But later on, you know after three or four, five years, he was a good guy, you know he sort of split from this second wife. And about that time his first wife got very sick. And he went to visit her in hospital and held her hand when she died. She said “even though you left me, I never stopped loving you, George. I’d always forgive you.” And when I heard that, I thought, wow, that wife you had and he said, “I was so wrong to, to have, left you. I was stupid. I didn’t realise just how beautiful your love was. It was unconditional, even though I caused you pain. And just after about 40 years of marriage, I decided to, you know, go with somebody else.” I know the other girl, she’s a really good girl. You know you can’t really criticise people. But, that woman he married first of all, she was, she understood what love was, totally unconditional and forgiving.

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• Good, bad — who knows? The king's finger

  In brief: A king scratches his finger hunting; the court doctor only says 'good, bad, who knows?' When the finger worsens and must be amputated, the…

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  it was a story of the king you went hunting you know this is a good dad who knows story a golden oldie but is so powerful King when hunting and when he was hunting he scratched his finger and when he scratched his finger there was a doctor in his entourage and so he called a doctor over doctor my fingers been scratched can you please have a look at it and the doctor looked at it and just put a bandaid on it and the King said is it gonna be okay it's my finger and she would ask her doctor is it gonna be okay and the doctor said good bad who knows that's pretty wise isn't it you know it didn't impress the King that much so when he got back to the palace after enjoying himself on the hunt by that time the finger was red it was infected so the king called the doctor over again and said doctor look at my finger it's got worse and so the doctor took the band-aid off put some ointment on I put a proper bandage and I cleaned it out put a bandage on and of course the the King asked again is it gonna be okay is it okay and the doctor you said good bad who knows so the key was a bit perturbed but he's very busy so he just let the stupid doctor go away but a couple of days later I mean his finger was so bad you know that the doctor had to amputate it that's how infected it was and of course you know if that happened to you you'd sue the doctor you know you get a lawyer and take them to court or whatever and get some compensation in those days it wasn't suing you just put that doctor in prison in the bottom of the palace and he put the doctor in prison himself say you stupid doctor law what's happened to my finger all this good bad who knows business and so what do you think about that there may be in jail I know where the doctor who applied to their King being in jail good bad who knows that crazy doctor you can run there so that they've left the doctor in jail and of course in a couple of weeks later when his finger was healed he went back to his favorite pastime hunting in the forest and this time he was a bit heedless he was following some sort of animal and got separated from the rest of his entourage and got lost in the forest lost in the forest wandering around he actually got captured by this forest people these indigenous people and they were so totally startled beyond his control they didn't know he was a king they just captured him they happened to be one of their holy days so they took him to the priests to be sacrificed so their God a human sacrifice so they tied him up and the priest was doing all the mumbo-jumbo and the dancing up and down and stuff and then he got out the sacrificial knife it was about to snow slit the Kings well there's only the last moment the very last moment that the priests realized the king was missing a finger and he said stop everybody if we make a sacrifice to our God we have to sacrifice somebody perfect he's not perfect enough he's missing one finger set him free so because he lost one finger and he wasn't perfect enough to be sacrificed to a god they set him free and he realized that doctor what a wise man he was I lost a finger I thought it was bad but as he was good because if I had all my ten fingers I'd be dead by now so soon as he as soon as he found his way back to the prison he went in the bathroom as he went straight to the prison straight to the doctor's cell and opened the lock himself and said you're free I'm so sorry what I did know you were right and he told him the story and I said it was good I lost my finger otherwise I wouldn't be here today I'd be dead sacrificed but the doctor was remorseful he felt so guilty about what he did

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• Fifty strokes of the cat

  In brief: A new postulant confesses to secretly making an afternoon sandwich and, refusing Ajahn Brahm's gentle advice, insists on a penance or…

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  is a story many years ago of one of the anagarikas one of the people in white who's trained to be a monk at Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine. When you become a monk you have to train for a minimum of two years beforehand, one year wearing white keeping eight precepts, the next year in brown keeping ten precepts, and afterwards after two years maybe you can ordained as a full monk. There was one young man, an Australian man who was starting his training as an anagarika, eight precepts. One of those precepts is you're not allowed to eat any solid food from noon until the dawn the following day, you can't eat in the afternoon or night time. So I was the abbot, one afternoon this new anagarika, a young man, came up to me and said, "I have something to confess, I've done a terrible crime. I know you're gonna probably throw me out of the monastery and not let me be a monk, because one afternoon I was hungry, I went into the kitchen with no one seeing me and made myself a sandwich." [laughter] And to him it was like some capital offense. And so what did I do? I told him, I said, "It doesn't matter, thank you for letting me know, now maybe eat some more food at lunchtime, you know before lunch when we have our meal, eat some more so you won't be hungry in the afternoon. If you are hungry you can have some cup of tea with some sugar, some fruit juice or some chocolate, so you don't have to eat in the afternoon. So it was a mistake, you admit it, have some strategies in place so it doesn't happen again. Okay, you can go now." This young man looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, that's not good enough." [laughter] He said, "If you don't punish me I will do it again." [laughter] "I need a penance." Because he knew himself, he spent all his life only being trained by punishment. He said, "If you let me go like that I'm sure one day I will do it again." So I had to think very quickly of a solution to that problem. As it was, I'd been reading a book, a very well-known Australian book called "Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes, which was telling the early history of Australia. I got to that point about the convicts who were here in Australia, and the harsh punishments meted out to them. So I looked at that young man in white clothes with a bald head and I said, "If you want a punishment I will give you a traditional Australian penance... "50 strokes of the cat." This young man, his face went whiter than the clothes he was wearing. 'Cause he didn't know too much about Buddhism and he thought, "Oh, my god, Ajahn Brahm is gonna whip me, he's gonna lash me." [laughs] But then I told him what "50 strokes of the cat" means in a Buddhist monastery. We have three cats in our monastery, choose whichever one you want and stroke it 50 times, "there cat, there pussy ... three, four." Learn some compassion and kindness 'cause that's the only thing which will overcome your need for punishment and pain. It's because you don't know kindness and compassion that you think that fear is the only way to train you. I said, "We don't do fear, we do compassion and kindness."

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• The encyclopedia he felt guilty for selling

  In brief: As a poor student he sold children's encyclopedias door to door, trained to make parents feel guilty. He sold one — to a struggling young…

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  as a poor student I got a job setting encyclopedias door-to-door that's how desperate I was the worst thing was I actually sold one because actually a children's encyclopedia and after selling one I felt so guilty afterwards because selling the stupid worthless encyclopedia to this young family who just had a kid and they would feel guilty because you actually trained how to make parents feel so guilty but they would just know once that would ask them pedophiles or child abusers if they didn't buy this stupid book for their kid so they bought this bucket of a thing they waited bunny on this stupid book and they're struggling to survive and I felt terrible for years on that until one day is actually I told her story here and somebody came up to me and they said this is weird they said it's just too much of a coincidence but some of these coincidence because of the law of karma that's how this coincidence happens they said when I was very small this some woman said she lived in England she said this young student came to my door and sold my parents this children's encyclopedia and she said I love those books they meant so much to me and I had so much happiness reading those encyclopedias so I don't know if it was you but he could have been as soon as I heard that I thought wow actually something good

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