Her chronic arthritis was gone

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• The meditator twisted into a knot

  In brief: On a retreat someone interrupts his meditation: a woman is twisted into an extreme, contorted posture. Afterwards he asks if she's all…

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  There was this one lady once on a meditation retreat and uh she was twisted around into such a contorted posture that I can't show you what it looked like. If I did, you'll have to take me to hospital too. And somebody actually interrupted my meditation. Ajam brah look at that lady and she was really really heavily twisted and I was concerned for her too. I thought you know if you do that to a person with against their will that would just really torture them. So I waited for her to come out of a meditation. And when she did, I took her aside and said, "Excuse me, but when you were meditating, you were really twisted around in such an extreme position. I feel okay." She said, "Yeah, I didn't know I was twisted around so much. I felt great." And then I felt stupid. Ajan Brahmy should have known better. So the next question I asked was, "Where did you have your uh car accident?" I remember her response there was a bra at last I've got proof you have got psychic powers. I never told anything about that. And of course they didn't have psychic powers. All it really was is just you knew that that was the most common injury to your back. And somehow or other she had a very bad she told me about it very bad car accident. She was happy to get out alive and she obviously went to hospital many times and then she started twisting around against it. Didn't know what she was doing. She was in a meditation. She didn't understand that she was twisting around. Her body did it all by itself. When it twisted around that allowed the energies to flow to actually to heal some of those places in her body which the doctors couldn't get to. That's why she said she felt tremendous afterwards.

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• “When did you have your accident?”

  In brief: A retreatant reports that as she grew still her back became very hot, not painfully. Ajahn Brahm asks when she had her accident;…

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  Few years ago a person in the retreat in North Perth came up to me and said she had a very strange experience during her meditation. She was getting quite still but her back became very hot. It was like on fire. not unpleasantly so, not painfully, but like an information was occurring there and she did not know why. So she came and saw me afterwards and say, "What's going on?" I was meditating there and suddenly got really warm and hot. So I asked her, "When did you have your accident?" And she looked at me and bra you read my mind had a car accident a few years ago. Yes. And you injured your back and shoulders. Yes. How do you know? Look, it's not psychic powers. It's just you told me because this is what happens.

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• Ajahn Chah sits in the centre of the fever

  In brief: Malaria was an occupational hazard for jungle monks, and Ajahn Chah suffered it for years. During one intense attack, instead of lying in…

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  And I know Ajahn Chah's story, my teacher, being a forest monk living in the jungles he had malaria for many years it was for those monks an occupational hazard just like these days, for current monks having tummy aches is an occupational hazard simply because as I told you I don't own my stomach you put whatever you want into it, and sometimes my stomach says 'no' (Ajahn laughs) But nevertheless you get to peace with that. His occupational hazard was malaria for many years I remember him telling me how he overcame his malaria once and for all having a very intense attack of the fever and instead of just laying in bed, sitting up meditating with it instead of running away from the thing or complaining about it, worrying about it what most people do when you got a problem, a disease or a tumor or whatever you think about it too much it creates more problems by the way react to them Instead he sat with it, he said he sat right in the centre of his fever quietly silently had peace with it. And it's a very hard thing to do but it's a wonderful thing to train yourself to be able to do. To be able to make peace with pain or with the fever, or with difficulty to make absolute peace with it so you don't even think you are just there at one with what you are experiencing not making any inner speech with it. he said as he was just with that he sort of felt like he was in the centre of a raging forest fire. but in the centre it was cool. but he could perceive all around him was a fire getting hotter and hotter and hotter which was his fever increasing in intensity and he said at one point the fever got so hot it burst and everything was cool. He never got malaria ever again.

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• The monk who pulled his own tooth

  In brief: Rather than travel to a dentist, a Bodhinyana monk pulls his own tooth with workshop pliers; he explains that only the twenty seconds of…

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  I know that one of our monks many years ago, he, you know, he had a bad teeth, and you know, we live in Serpentine, it's a long way to go to the dentist. And you know what it's like these days, you have to make an appointment, and when you go to the appointment then you have to wait and then... It's just such a pain in the... actually probably the pain in the neck is worse than the pain in the mouth to go to the dentist sometimes. So this monk decided "ah yeah, it's a waste of time going to the dentist". So he decided to pull his own tooth out. I saw him! He just, he went to the workshop, got a pair of pliers and just yanked his tooth out. And I just happened to be going to the workshop at Bodhinyana Monastery and I saw this bloody tooth, you know, in a pair of pliers. "What have you been doing?" "Oh you know, took my tooth out, It's much cheaper and much quicker than going to the dentist." And I thought "How did you do that?" And he said "It's very easy, because..." It's a wonderful little teaching He said: "When I decided to pull my tooth out, that didn't hurt. You know, thinking about, planning doesn't hurt. And when I went to the workshop that didn't hurt, when I picked up the pliers that didn't hurt, when I put the pair of pliers on the tooth that never hurt, when I wiggled that hurt! But you know, just for, maybe, twenty seconds, thirty seconds and it was out and it didn't hurt much afterwards. It's only twenty seconds of pain, that's all." But if that was you, (Points at audience), even before you'd even picked up the pliers it would hurt like hell (Laugh). You see what pain is? Anticipation. He trained himself not to anticipate, being in the present moment, so it's only ten seconds of pain.

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