The heart-attack role play

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• The 'fearless' monk on the burning bus

  In brief: During a spate of deadly bus fires in north-east Thailand, someone on Ajahn Brahm's bus shouts “fire!”; the driver leaps out the window…

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  In Thailand many years ago when I was there about five years as a monk, that all the buses in the Northeast were very old, 'cause they just tried to use them until they could literally not to run anymore, so they're very old buses. And it happened that one bus caught fire because it wasn't well maintained, and actually people got incinerated inside. I don't know why it was, but one bus after another, it was a whole spate of these buses suddenly catching fire. I know one of the monks I was practicing with in the monastery, he was actually on one those buses, he managed to get out but I think his bowl and his robes all got burnt in the fire and he got some compensation from the bus company. That's how dangerous it was. I was on one of these buses once. As a monk they always put you in the front seat, you know why that is, so that you can stop people having head-on collisions because you've got good kamma, you protect all the people around the back. But .... There was a fire in the back and they shouted out "fire, fire," and the bus driver slammed on the brakes, you almost went through the window but you managed to stop yourself, so he slammed on the brakes, and he was out the window himself. And all the people, they rushed out of the door. And it was actually another monk with me, now as a monk we're not supposed to get in contact with women, and nuns are not supposed to get in contact with men. So there were women on the bus, but this monk sitting next to me, he didn't mind, he was out. But I was a very well-behaved monk and let the other people go out first of all, you know I was brought up in England being a gentleman. [laughter] But most of the reason why I didn't get out was 'cause my Thai wasn't that good, I wondered what all the commotion was about, 'cause I didn't understand "fire," and I hadn't read the newspapers of how many people got killed. So I just sat there quite peacefully and actually I was... I wasn't the last one out, I was the second last one out because it was another man who lingered in the back, and he looked, there was only a small amount of smoke, and he shouted out to the other people, everyone was out except me and this guy, and he said, "It's only a cigarette, it's not a real fire, just cigarette smoke." So when people heard that, they put the cigarette out, and everyone started coming in, I was sitting in the front seat, and they said, "Oh, the saint, the arahant, the holy enlightened Western monk. Oh, you're so wonderful, you had no fear," not like that the other scalawag monk who ran out and touched all of us. [laughter] That was a wonderful moment for me but to be honest, I wasn't a hero I was just stupid 'cause I didn't know what was going on.

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• The young doctor who wanted to quit

  In brief: A first-year intern loses his first patient, a young mother, and must tell her husband that his wife is dead and his kids have no mother.…

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  The doctor, he’s not here this evening, he lost his first patient first year as a doctor, as an intern, came to see me, wanted to resign, “I don’t want to be a doctor anymore.” Why? He said, “Cos I had to tell, I had to tell this girl’s widow, this young man, the one he loved the most in his life, is dead. And your kids have got no mother.” And you could see just the pain in this poor young man’s face. He’d just come back from the hospital, I don’t know whether it’s Royal Perth or Charlies Gairdner’s, just having told, you know, this poor guy, you know that he lost his wife, kids have no mom, and that just hurt him so much. Can you imagine having to do that? He said, “I can’t do this anymore, I have to just give in. I can’t be a doctor. Cos that’s going to happen again and I just can’t face having to be the one to tell somebody the incredibly painful news.” That’s when I told him and said, “You’ve misunderstood what being a doctor is all about. If you think that being a doctor is curing all your patients, you are going to fail so many times in your life. You’re going to go through this so many times. The reason is because you haven’t understood what the role of a doctor is. The role of a doctor is not to cure, is to care. To care for your patients, not to cure them.” You know what I mean, if curing is the number one thing you're supposed to do, some of the interventions which happen in hospitals today – cure at all costs, forget about caring for the patients. If it hurts, it’s going to prolong their life unnecessarily, that’s curing. Caring is a totally different agenda. If it’s caring, a lot of times, I have to care for this person, it’s time to let them go. No more interventions. The quality of their moment is more important than keeping them alive. And I said, “If your job as a doctor is to care for people, you will never have to fail. You can always care for people, you can’t always cure them. Therefore you can always be a successful doctor. You will lose many of your patients. They will die. But you will be able to go to their widow, to their family and say – they were cared for. They were cared for to the max, and the family, yeah they will be sad. They’ll realise everything was done and your loved one died, being loved and cared for.

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• No electricity on the big day

  In brief: On the morning of the ceremony starting the rains retreat at Bodhinyana — the monastery's second-biggest day, with many guests coming —…

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  last Sunday we had to be ceremony abode jnana monastery in certain time start of arranged retreat we'd all been organizing this got all these people coming and when I actually I got up very early but when I came out of meditation at 6:30 no electricity the power outage on the biggest day of art not yet second biggest day of our year in the monastery no electricity it was freezing cold we won't be able to turn on any heaters won't be able to make cups of tea for people there'll be no lighting you know I never thought like that at all I thought what a wonderful thing let's embrace it it reminded us of the the first time is 28 years reading I'm honestly the first time we didn't have any electricity we just use candles or just no get a gas stove to heat up the water in it just nice we were just at that a lot of times when you adapt it becomes much more enjoyable

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• “Thank you for the car park”

  In brief: After lunch at Bodhinyana a stranger turns out to be the Serpentine-Jarrahdale Shire building surveyor who signed off all the monastery's…

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  that over in Bodhinyana monastery, over in Serpentine, I was just sitting there after lunch receiving guests, and this gentleman came up I’ve never seen before (but I remembered his voice for a strange reason), and I find out after he told me that he was the local building surveyor at the Shire of Serpentine-Jarrahdale. So every building which we applied for permission for, he'll be the one who looks at it and checks that it fulfils all of the regulations and ticks it off. And I asked him: 'What are you doing here' and he said that he's not come to check up on anything, because this was his last day at work in that job, he was retiring that afternoon - but he said he came here to thank me for the car park. I felt really weird, ‘thanking me for the car park, what are you talking about?’ And he said to me that he wasn't a Buddhist, he didn't know how to meditate - but - every time he got stressed out at work, he simply got into his car, drove to the monastery in Serpentine and parked his car in the car park, and just sat there maybe 15 minutes or half an hour. And then, afterwards, he felt so much better, he went back to work

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