“The door of my house will always be open to you”

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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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• The tribe that praises the wrongdoer

  In brief: Ajahn Brahm recounts an email about a tribe untouched by other cultures: when someone does wrong — steals or hits someone — he stands in…

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  somebody sent me this interesting email the other day and it was some tribe which has you know been totally untainted by other cultures that in this try when anybody makes a mistake or does anything wrong or bad like steals or hit somebody or he stands in the center of this circle and all the members of the tribe stand around him he's done something bad but do they punish him no for two or three days he has to stand in the middle and they all tell him wonderful things about himself what a great person he is for three days when he's done something wrong

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• Seven monks in a cave

  In brief: Seven monks practise loving-kindness in a jungle cave: the abbot, his brother, his best friend, his 'enemy', a very old monk, a very sick…

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  And that was the story of the seven monks meditating in a cave. This is in the Opening the Door of Your Heart. And I had great fun telling this story when I was in the USA a couple of years ago, and listening to me was a bishop, an Episcopalian bishop, Similar to an Anglican bishop. I told this because I was feeling a little bit cheeky, See if I can catch him out, and he fell into the trap, but he thanked me for it afterwards. And he said, can I please use this in my sermon? I said, oh, please do. And it was this story of the seven monks meditating in a cave. They were meditating on loving-kindness which I hope you all know, May all beings be happy and well. May all beings without distinction, without discrimination on species or race, gender, sexual orientation, my loving-kindness goes to everyone. And the seven monks meditating in this cave, listen carefully because there's a question coming at the end. And if you've heard it before, you have to promise to please shut up. Don't spoil my fun. So, the seven monks were the head monk, the boss, the abbot. The second monk was his best friend. They'd grown up together, they loved each other, just like the third monk who was his brother. They loved each other. The fourth monk, however, even though they ordained, was an, he called him his enemy. They just had personality clash, they just didn't get on. Even though they were really good people, they just, you know, whenever one said one thing, it just always grated on the other. You know, really good people, they still can't get on. I see that quite often when people come to marriage counselling. Really good people, why don't you get on? There's something I still can't understand. You see the woman, the wife, she's just a beautiful girl, known her a long time. See the guy, amazing fellow, just be getting into bad habits, that's all. So this was a typical bad habit, this monk, two monks, didn't get on together. And the fifth monk, number five, was a very old monk. He's so old, so advanced in years. he could die any day. Just waiting for just his last breath. And the next monk was also, he was a sick monk, very ill, so ill, they never thought he would recover, no monk would know who was going to die first, the old monk or the sick monk. They were both at the end of their life. And the last monk, number seven, is what we call the useless monk. The useless monk, whenever they tried to meditate, he would always be the first one to fall asleep, which wasn't that bad, but he'd snore really loudly. Whenever they did any chanting, he would always chant out of key, if he could remember the words anyway. And even when he was wearing his robe, his robe always tended to fall off. I wonder what that useless monk is. And he was a useless monk, and as I often say when I mention this part of the story, and this is actually true, every monastery has one. (audience laugh) You can find out who it is. (audience laughs) No... He's a good monk. (laughter) He's supposed to be my attendant for the weekend. If I didn't say that, he wouldn't feed me. Look after me. Ask Ayya Hasapanna Nunneries as well, the same, they always have the useless one. Anyway, and the useless monk was number seven. And what happened next was this gang of robbers, these thieves, they found this cave deep in the jungle, and they thought, this is a great place for our hideout. After we've robbed and maybe killed, we can take all of our loot, all of our stolen goods into this cave. And they didn't have money laundering in those days. I was going to say sort of overseas banks, Panama, but I bet I'll get in trouble for that. So they didn't have overseas banks in those days, so they just had to hide their ill-gotten goods. This is a brilliant place to hide our goods. And also, they found it first. So, let's kill all the monks, so none of the monks can say the location of this cave to the police. That was what they wanted to do. But the senior monk, the senior monk was such a great talker, so convincing, if he hadn't taken the robes, he could have been the treasurer of a country like ours. I better not go further on that one either. So, the senior monk managed to talk and convince the head of the thieves to letting all the monks go except one. Because the only reason he wanted to kill everybody, or kill all the monks, is so they didn't tell where the location of the cave was. So the head monk said, look, we're monks, we keep our promises, we won't tell the location of the caves, let us go. And the head bandit said, no, I've got to be sure, I'm going to make an example, I'm going to kill one of the monks in front of the rest of you, in front of the other six, as a warning. Because if you tell the location of this cave, we'll find you, we'll come for you, and the same will happen to you. And that's the best deal the head monk could do. That one of them had to be killed in front of the others, so the rest could go free. So now the question is, who was chosen? And before you answer, I've got to go through the list again. Head monk, brother, best friend, enemy, old monk, sick monk, both at the end of their lives anyway, it was a day or two, 60, 70 years matter. And lastly the useless monk, and the useless monk had never done anything for anybody, never done any good karma in his whole life, maybe this was his chance. So if you were the head monk, who would you choose? Answer? If you know the answer, please be quiet, don't spoil it. Who did he choose? Thank you for that wrong answer because that's what the bishop said. (laughter) And when I tell the story, that's what most people say. He sacrificed himself. And that is the wrong answer but there's a reason why I tell this story which is coming up soon. Any other suggestions? Who else? Anyone for the useless monk? yeah, there at the back, I thought that. No, of course not. The answer is, those people who have heard the story know, it's a very good story once you find out what the answer is and why the meaning of telling this story. The answer was that the head monk's love for his brother was no more, no less than the love for the best friend. If you love two people just the same, you just can't choose between them. And his love towards the enemy was no more, no less than the other two. Even the old monk and sick monk and the useless monk, he loved everybody equally, he just couldn't judge between them, no matter who they were and what they did. His love was unconditional, all beings, no matter what gender, what race, what religion, what they did or what they didn't do, his love was given to everybody equally. And most importantly, his love towards himself was no more, no less than his love to all the other six monks. And that's where I told the Bishop, I said, didn't your teacher, Jesus, tell you to love your neighbour as yourself? He said, yeah, doesn't that mean to love yourself as your neighbour? No more, no less, that's what the word "as" means, to love your neighbour as yourself means to love yourself as your neighbour, equally Yes, he said, he gave me the Buddhist respect. He said that's why he wants to teach that in his sermons.

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• My father's resolution

  In brief: His father never spoke of his own father in Liverpool. At 14 or 15 Ajahn Brahm finally gets it out of him: 'Your grandfather was a…

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  My father... he was a very kind man. But he would never tell me about my paternal grandfather, my father's dad. And it was frustrating for me every time I asked him, "How was my grandfather like, in Liverpool?" He then asked me, "Be quiet". And then eventually when I was about 14 or 15, I got it out of my dad. I was persistent, "You got to tell me because this is my family. I never saw them because they died during the second World War before I was born. So, how was my paternal grandfather like, and that is when my dad said, please excuse the word, but this is what he said. He said, "Your grandfather was a bastard." He said it was just so much pain in him. That shocked me. I said, "Why?" He said he was not a sexual offender, but a physical offender. He would come home, almost every evening, drunk. He was a plumber. He'd come back drunk, and he'd take off his belt. He'd whip any kid, which you know, he came across. And then he would start beating his wife, my dad's mum. My dad often said that, the pain of just the end of the belt for no reason at all, just my father was drunk. That would never hurt as much as seeing his mother beaten, for no reason at all. He said that really hurt, because he could do nothing to help someone he loved, my paternal grandmother, whom I never saw. But why I say this story for is what my father did about that. He was a child at the time, he could do nothing, except to make this resolution. He told me, he shared it with me this time. He said, "When I was at the end of a beating for no reason, just because my father was drunk, I made this resolution that if ever I survive and have kids myself; and of course he did, me and my brother. If ever I survive, I will never ever do that to my kids. I won't use corporal punishment at all. I'd always remember that. Because I remember several times, brother and I were naughty, just ordinary kids. And sometimes, he'd come into our bedroom with a slipper. He just couldn't do it. He'd just put the slipper down and walked out, because he remembered just what it was like for him.

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