“My eye is the biggest thing in the world”

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• The monk who stopped the bus by thinking

  In brief: A forest monk visiting Ubon rides a bus for the first time and wonders how an engine works; as soon as he thinks about the motor it stops,…

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  There's one of the the forest monks a good meditator. It's a first time when he was visiting the town of Ubon. That's you know where I grew up as a monk. He was visiting Ubon and he went into a bus for the first time in his life. This was many years ago. And then he started thinking I wonder how a bus works. internal combustion engine. He never gone to school and seen diagrams of internal combustion engines. I wonder how it works. And so he started thinking about the motor. As soon as he started thinking about it, the motor stopped. It wouldn't work. And so he stopped thinking about it and it worked again. He said, "It's really weird." And then he thought about it again and it stopped. He was actually interfering with the firing of the car. But that became such a well-known story in that part of the world that when Ajent char got on an aircraft to go to London, people said to him, "Please don't think about how this aircraft works. You must stop the engine. They were all dead.

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• On top of the pyramid at Tikal

  In brief: At 18, in 1969, before university, Ajahn Brahm got bored of the USA and travelled into the jungles of Central America — buses, fishing…

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  one of the great ways I figured out how to overcome confusion was uh a time when I was 19 no 18 only 18 and I went to uh just before going up to University went over to United States you know just didn't have a gap year but a gap three or four months and I got really bored with being in the US it just like any other country and just to the south over the Border was Mexico and a little bit South in the jungles of Central America and that was really interesting because there was indigenous cultures over there which were totally different than anything which I had known and so I went into the jungles of the Yucatan Peninsula in bordering Mexico and Guatemala and I always wanted to go and visit those great pyramids in the middle of the jungles and those were 1969 there was no other way to get to that central part of the Jungle except on Old buses and fishing boats and uh trucks on the back of heavily Laden trucks going through the jungle it was like an adventure and I always remember just going down this river which separated uh bise British Honduras and Guatemala and you know it was literally just jungle on either side any moment I expected Taren to come swinging through on the trees and there was a Dugout boat with a couple of Indians indigenous uh jungle dwellers totally naked and I remember we stopped at the cafe and the Cafe was this is old thatch and bamboo Hut which serve this incredibly thick and sweet coffee and black beans with tortilla absolutely delicious probably terrible for your health but absolutely delicious and just going from there to the end of the river and then on the back of a truck and for about 3 days traveling through the jungle until you got to the the pyramids in teal and as soon as I arrived there there was I think one person supposed to be maybe an archaeologist was fossing around but no one else was there it was no sort of place where you had to pay entrance fees no shop selling artifacts or selling uh Cups of Tea it was actually totally sort of free and no signs telling what you could do what you couldn't do so I was an 18-year-old boy so you know what 18-year-old men do when they see a pyramid climb it don't worry do those things but so I climbed it not knowing what I'd find at the top but when I got to the top of this PID it's a long way up there I found a story about confusion and about insight and about wisdom and about truth because I was told that these pyramids have some religious or spiritual significance but I hadn't any idea what I never I couldn't afford any guide book and I hadn't done any research at all about those ancient um Mayan civilization they disappeared and no one actually knows why they disappeared and so it was totally unknown it's beautiful if you can have what we call like this open empty mind whenever you face any experiences because if you expect to find something if you know what you're supposed to see it spoils the whole experience you're not open to truth and seeing things in incredible beautiful ways and so as soon as I climbed on the top of that pyramid it was obvious to me what they were there for because I'd spent three days at least traveling in the jungle and if you ever been in real rainforest real jungle which hasn't been developed you'll find that any road or path they cut through the jungle within a few days gets covered over with this this Jungle which is full of Life trees branches they all cover over the path so you are literally traveling through tunnels and I'd never seen the Horizon for 3 days I never seen any far distances and now for the first time in 3 days I climbed up to the top of that pyramid and it was just above thee tree line and now I could see the Horizon these great distances and first of all I thought wow what it would be like to have been born in that jungle spent all your life never see seeing far distances and for the first time some priest takes you up to the top of that pyramid and now you can see Infinity in all directions with nothing between you and the infinite in every direction wow the metaphor was so striking you understand why sometimes when we put things between you and whatever you take to be the infinite in other words religions that that blocks you experiencing the vast emptiness and space there's no barriers there as you stand on top of that pyramid and see forever in every direction and of course afterwards then I looked down at the jungle and you could see where you'd come from it took days to get there but you know because it was Jungle you can't travel fast it's not like the freeway it takes forever and on the top there you can see these great distances I could see the village which I slept in the night before wasn't that far away away and you got the What I Call These Days a Google map view of the Jungle now I was not confused and I use that simil about how to overcome confusion in life wherever it happens to be cuz confusion is like you're right inside the jungle and you can't see great distances all you can see is the next tree the next Vine the next Bush and you know you don't know where you are where you should go even where you've come from to arrive here and the obvious solution when it's confusion is to try and find metaphorically a way to get out of that jungle a tree a tower or in this case a pyramid so you're actually out of your confused little lifestyle that your um entangled web of relationships emotions where you're climbed out beyond the the thicket of thoughts and when you climb out above that you can see from above all the confusion is resolved not only can you can see where you come from you can see where you need to go the path to go on you can also understand why you had to come that way and the greatest thing is to being above all of that thinking emotions difficulty entanglements you're so high above all of that for little while that you can see this great emptiness Infinity foreverness which Embraces and covers everything and gives it some meaning wow so I always thought that that was the meaning of those great pyramids only works in the jungle because it gives you that few moments where you're totally free of confusion

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• 20,000 to one: the husband who lied once

  In brief: After a talk in Malaysia a mathematics lecturer asks whether to divorce her husband because she discovered he lied. Ajahn Brahm does the…

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  The classic tale was when I was teaching in Malaysia, and somebody asked me this question at the end of the talk. I have found out this morning my husband has lied to me. My husband has lied. I can't trust him anymore. Should I get divorced? She asked me whether she should get divorced. Quick I asked her what are you doing at this university. She was a lecturer on mathematics. So I saw an opportunity to answer her question, I asked how long have you been married, she said three years. I said let's do some statistics. Three years is maybe one thousand days. Lets say for the sake of this argument, let's assume that on average throughout your three years of marriage, your husband has said maybe twenty things to you every day, on average, which could be right, which could be wrong. So he's said twenty thousand statements to you since you've been married and now he's lied for the first time. The quantum probability theory on his past record, the next time he opens his mouth there is a twenty thousand to one chance he's telling the truth. What do you mean you can't trust him? [LAUGHTER] Isn't that pretty good odds, twenty thousand to one? If every time a politician opened their mouth with twenty thousand to one chance they're telling the truth, I'd vote for them, wouldn't you? They'd be trust worthy. But you can see what we've pointed out, that why is it that one lie, a real lie, they'd lied, why is that given so much prominence that everything else is totally forgotten and ignored? This is the stupidity of our human being which is just so fault finding and negative it hasn't got a balanced perspective on life. That lady wanted to destroy her marriage. Once I told her that story they stayed together.

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• Two bad bricks in the wall

  In brief: Building the broke new monastery at Serpentine, the ex-physicist monk lays his first brick wall with painstaking perfectionism — then sees…

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  The story of the two bad bricks in the wall, twenty six years ago, twenty seven years ago when we moved to Serpentine to build that monastery down there we had no money, we were broke, and because... we owed money for the land, there were no buildings on that property. So I had to learn how to build. And I was theoretical physicist before, ok, in my head doing sums all day. Now I had to get out there and get my hands dirty and mix concrete and lay bricks and put on a roof and do plumbing. Everything we did. And even to this day, if any of you going into that main hall in our monastery, I am the builder. My name is on the building license for that. And it's still standing so that's pretty good. [LAUGHTER] So in particular, this story I had to learn how to lay bricks. Laying bricks was not a simple thing to do, it may look easy but it's so hard to get everything level. But, as most people would be I was a perfectionist. I had to make sure that brick was perfectly level before I went onto the next one. Sometimes one corner was high, you'd knock it down and another corner would go up. You knock that corner down then it would go out of line. You knock it back into line thinking it was finished, you notice one of the corners was high again. It was just one of those jobs which, where you couldn't get everything in the right place but you kept on trying until you got it. It took a long time but it didn't matter cause I wasn't being paid. So I could take however long I wanted. And when I finished that wall, that first brick wall, like anybody else you were proud, finished, you stood back to look at it and admire it, and it was only then when it was finished I noticed that two bricks were crooked. All the other bricks were straight, two bricks were crooked. So what would you do? What I did was try and scrape the mortar out so I could reset the bricks so they could be perfect. But the mortar was hard, you couldn't scrape it out. And the other monk who was with me at the time, Ajahn Jagaro, I asked him look can we afford, can we please afford some dynamite so I blow it up and start again? Bulldozer would do, push it over. Because...that spoiled the whole wall. Those two bad bricks, they ruined the whole thing. But we couldn't, I was stuck with it, we were too poor to do anything with it. So for three months, every time I went passed that wall I saw my mistakes and I felt so sad. I'd stuffed up. And the worst thing about stuffing up when you're building everybody could see it, you can't hide it. It's a big wall, out there in the open. So, every time there was a visitor, I would actually volunteer to take them around so I could, you know, take them somewhere else so they wouldn't see my mistakes. At night time I'd have nightmares about that wall. I would, I'd dream of it, because I'd really made a big mistake and everybody could see it. And it was three months, roughly, I'm not quite sure it's a long time ago now, about three months somebody else was with me and they saw that wall and they said that's a beautiful wall. And I just couldn't believe what I'd heard because for three months I'd been suffering so much with that wall and they said it's a beautiful wall. My first reaction was to ask them are you visually impaired, are you blind, did you leave your glasses in the car? Can't you see those two bad bricks, the crooked ones. And what they said next just changed much of the way I look at life and stopped a lot of inherent depression in myself. What they said was yes I can see the two bad bricks, but I can also see the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks as well. And that really hit me, because I realised for three months I was blind. All I ever saw was my two mistakes and I just could not see all the beautiful perfect bricks which I had laid. And when that guy told me what about the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks that was the first time in three months that I could actually see the bricks above, below, to the left and the right of my two mistakes. And I had to agree with the fellow, it was a beautiful wall, once I could see the whole picture.

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