“My nose is too big”

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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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• Two monks tell each other who they are

  In brief: After a three-month rains retreat together, Ajahn Brahm and another Western monk sit down and tell each other what they think of each…

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  I did a lovely experiment after when I was a monk I was spending three months in the range retreat with another Western Monk and at the end of The Retreat we sat down and we told each other what we thought of each other now honestly two monks and I was listening to his opinion of who he thought I was and it was totally different to anything I ever expected to see myself I heard myself described in another person's eyes that was not what I thought of myself and I did the same to him and he was gobsmacked too

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• Interrupted by the radio

  In brief: A former caretaker of the Perth centre retired to Beverley for a peaceful life but fell into depression. He went into his shed, tied a…

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  he lives over in Beverly he was an old caretaker of our Center here he left to have a nice peaceful time up in Beverly and but you know we all go through difficult times he went through a depression and he got so deped pressed he actually went into his shed and tied a rope to the rafter tied a noose got the chair ready and went into the Caravan where he was saying to write his suicide note he had the he had the uh the radio one at the time just the local radio and as he was writing a suicide note you know just halfway through who would come on the radio aan brah and he said oh no I can't do anything without this m getting in the way so he ripped up his suicide now untied the rope and came and told me about it afterwards he said it's really too difficult to commit suicide you even get on the radio and stop me that's another guy I've got saved his life

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• The prisoner who fed the cat

  In brief: A depressed prisoner insists he is only a bad person. Ajahn Brahm has him list bad deeds on the left of a sheet and good deeds on the…

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  there was one of these prisoners who just so depressed? And when I said, why are you depressed? Look, I'm in jail. I did a bad thing. I feel so terrible. This my life is over. Finished. And then usually I asked him, well, what good things have you done? Nothing. You must have done something good. No, I'm a bad person. And then and then he he uh wrote out I wrote out this piece of paper line down the middle your name on the top. Now on the left hand side write all the bad I won't show it to anybody else. Write down all the bad things you've done. Things which you put been put in jail for and things which you did but weren't put in jail for. Put them all down. They won't show them to anybody else. He trusted me. That's one of the nice things about being a monk. People actually trust you and you know if that's what you say that's what you're going to do. So he wrote all these things on the left hand column all the terrible stuff he'd done. He felt good about confessing opening up. But then I asked him on the right hand side all the good things you've done. Nothing. No. Come on. You must have done something. The prison had a cat and I knew that he looked after the cat. Did you give the cat anything this morning? Said I gave it source of milk. Put it down. Had to force him to put down and write down. Fed the cat saucer of milk. But then he found another thing you could put down afterwards. Once you break that damn wall, it was amazing all the kind good things he'd done that past week. And you filled up the right hand side of that piece of paper. You know what I did next? tore that paper down the middle, threw away all the terrible things he did, and gave him the good things he did. Please keep this. Put it next to your bed in your cell. Photocopy if you like, but please keep that to realize you're not such a bad person after all

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