The encyclopedia he felt guilty for selling

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• The razor wheel in hell (Borobudur)

  In brief: Shown a Borobudur carving, Ajahn Brahm tells of a man who pushed over his mother and, out of guilt, is reborn in hell, where a razor wheel…

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  it was an old Buddhist story of a guy who had actually pretty good guy but he did one bad act he pushed over his mother and she injured herself and of course he felt so guilty about that that when he died he got born in this hell realm and he he went down to meet this guy you in this terrible realm and he saw this fellow you know having his head cut with a razor wheel you know just cutting into his head continuously you know obviously without him dying and he's in great pain but this guy said at last you've come because when I got this wheel it was 600 years ago cuz I hurt my mother and I was told that in 600 years time another guy will come cuz he also hurt his mom and when he comes the wheel will leave my head and I'll be free of this torture and it will go into this other guy's head and here you are here's a wheel so the wheel left this other guy and the guy sort of know vanished from this torture and he went into this new guy's head and he was cutting his head in an incredible Agony but this fellow this new guy he had thoughts of kindness of compassion and he said I'm going to take this wheel not for 600 years but for 3,000 years so the next four or five guys don't have to bear this I'll take their punishment for them and that kind thought the wheel shattered and he was taken away from this hell realm and reborn in the heaven realm Just one thought of kindness and compassion did that

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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 man who walked straight past the judge

  In brief: From a German book a German-born monk translated aloud: a seven- or eight-year-old boy has a near-death experience, walking through a…

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  A long time ago, there was a book coming around our monastery down in Serpentine. I don't know if it's still there. It was in German, it'd be great if it was translated into English. I don't know if it's been done. But one of our German monks, a German-born monk, he read it out to me in translation. It was a story of a young boy in Germany who had an out-of-the-body experience, just floating out of your body, near-death experience, he was only about seven or eight years of age. And the reason I remembered it was because of what this little boy learned from that out-of-the-body experience. He was walking through a forest, in Germany, forests are really important to people, so they live in the forest, their culture is born out of the forest. So that he was walking through a forest, having temporarily died, and he came to like a barn, like a shed, and it's typical the way that some people perceive that time when you left your body at the near-death or death, that he came to this guy who asked what his name was, and the guy looked in some book, they always say it's a book, these days if young people die, they find he just logs into a computer and checks your name, looked into a book, his name wasn't there, so he said, no you're not supposed to be dead, you'd better go back. But he said that before you go back, you can actually see how this all works. And so the next person who came to see if he really deserved to die or not was a farmer. And when the farmer came up, you know the guy, what's your name, oh yeah, your time's up, time you're dead, but said the guy who was with the book, and he said, have you ever killed anything, any animals? he said, oh no, no, no, maybe one or two, but no more than that. And the guy looked at this little kid and said, you see, even though he's dead, he still lies through his teeth, he was a farmer, he killed many animals. But as they were just talking to this farmer to see what he thought, where he is gonna go.. there was another man walked right past the shed, right past, and went up to what the little kid thought was heaven. And the kid said to the guy, aren't you going to stop him and ask him what he's been doing? And that's when this judge told this little kid, throughout that man's whole life, he hasn't judged anybody, therefore, we're not going to judge him.

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• The worst thing she'd ever done

  In brief: A woman dying of cancer meets Ajahn Brahm most Friday evenings. Wanting her to die free of her past, he asks in confidence for the worst…

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  about this woman, not far, in Tuart Hill somewhere. Tuart Hill, Dianella... And she was dying. And I asked her that once, before she passed away: 'Is there anything you've done in your life which you're very ashamed of?' And of course it took a while to get her to confess to me. And what she said was that once in her life she'd kissed another woman's husband. And I asked 'Is that all you've done?' She said 'Yes, I was so ashamed of it, you're the first person I've told.' So that's not bad, a whole life. We can forgive you that one. But for me, hearing that, that was a small thing. But for her, it was the most terrible thing she'd ever done. But once she actually confessed it, let somebody know, she also realized it wasn't that bad

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