The grumpy licence

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• Six months alone, and the kangaroos ate the pizza

  In brief: Sometime between 2000 and 2008 his year's sabbatical shrank to six months. Instead of touring, he stayed in a hut in the Serpentine forest…

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  I spent six months without seeing any human being, without talking to anybody else. What had happened was, I was supposed to have a sabbatical, a year off, but then it, one thing led to another, I can only have six months off, so you go anywhere in the world, where would you like to go for six months? I could go touring here, visiting this monastery or that monastery, but I said, "No." Why do people always have to seek for happiness somewhere else? Why can't I find that happiness right where I am in that monastery where I worked so hard to build it up? So I said, “No, I'm not going to seek for happiness contentment anywhere else,” I could go wherever I wanted to, but I decided to find the best happiness and truth and freedom and wisdom right here. So I had a hut in the forest in Serpentine and I stayed there for six months, never went anywhere except deeper and deeper inside.. And it was arranged that we had a box…, actually where's that box now? The box which…, I think it's over… Okay, still is there somewhere, anyway, we had a little box there, and in the morning, at a certain time, about 10:30, one of the monks would actually put my bowl with food in the box, and I'd know the time they were coming, so I knew to be in my hut, and afterwards I will go to the box, open it up, eat the food, and then wash the bowl, put it in the box there for the next day. So I never, it's much better than Uber Eats, it was “Monk Eats". I never got charged, I never saw anybody. So there I was, and they knew I was alive because they see my bowl, and the food was eaten, so and it could have been the Kangaroos, I suppose, eating the food, but no it was me, although sometimes, those kangaroos…, you know, that they're really really really smart, and they soon found out that I was, you know, in that hut, and sometimes you'd leave your food outside on the veranda, it's a walking path, and leave the bowl there just for a few minutes to go inside to get something 'cause I liked eating on the veranda at first, and you know what happened? You find a kangaroo with it's head inside my bowl, (laughs) taking the first choice of food before I ever got to it! And so I from that time I decided to, to eat inside my hut, and so even inside, but, you know, the window was open and the kangaroo will come up onto my path, and look at me through the window, and ahh… a poor kangaroo, so you know, you felt sort of some compassion for this poor.. They had plenty of grass, but then, I started by putting some healthy food outside, I remember, like a carrot, or some…, but you know, they weren't interested in that, you know the food they liked the most when I was on retreat? Pizza! Honest! (laughter) Like…, it was, I don’t know if it's healthy for them, but, you know, that's what the Kangaroos decided they wanted to eat, see a little kangaroo with a little pizza in their mouth, they loved that

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• What drug is he giving you?

  In brief: A high-flying Sydney executive has to beg and grovel to her boss for time off for a nine-day retreat at Jhana Grove. Afterwards she emails…

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  This lady from Australian girl from Sydney, one of these high executives. When she came, she said, "I had to beg and crawl and grovel from my boss to get the time off." But then she sent me this email after the 9-day retreat had finished and she said, "AJ, as soon as I got back to work, my boss took one look at me." And she he said to me, "Look, I don't care what drug Ajan Brah is giving you, but please bring me back some next time." She looks so peaceful and happy. It's weird.

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• Australian boys don't cry

  In brief: A ~30-year-old South Australian on his first retreat weeps uncontrollably. Asked when he last cried, he says age 12 or 13 — when his…

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  And I remember telling this lady a few minutes ago about this guy. He was an Australian and he's about 30 and he came from South Australia and he came on one of his first retreats and during that retreat he started crying his eyes out. [clears throat] Ah, what's going on? Is something going wrong? I'm crying. And I asked him, "When was the last time you cried before today?" And he went silent and said, "I last cried when I was only about 12 or 13." That's when my father said, "Australian boys don't cry." That's obvious, isn't it? you know that if you suppress that crying there's a lot of tears have to come out you know you build them up for a long time and so he cried and cried and cried what the benefits of crying so much and I mentioned and it was actually true he told me afterwards cuz he was a single guy he said he got lots and lots of uh females on that retreat were very interested in [laughter] It's a very attractive thing to do, isn't it? To cry. So, I don't need to go to to wear fancy clothes. Learn how to cry.

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• Depression privileges — a third bowl of ice cream

  In brief: He tells a depressed man not to advertise recovery too soon — wife and boss will put him back to work. The man later reports: when…

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  You got very many privileges being depressed." And I remember this because he told me afterwards, "Yes, so true. You know, this morning I had two bowls of ice cream. My wife would never let me have two bowls of ice cream when I was okay. But now she thinks I'm depressed. Oh, you have a third bowl

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