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Story · Ajahn Brahm

The floor the monks finished overnight

As told by Ajahn Brahm in The Fault Finding Mind | Ajahn Brahm | 7 May 2021

3 min read

Content note: names Geoff Gallop (former WA Premier) and fellow monks

The story — as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

Notice the floor in the meditation room, it hasn't got a carpet because we thought there's some people want to meditate and they have allergies. So, it's just a bamboo floor. It's very beautiful, but on bamboo floor. You know what happens again, Ajahn Brahm being the builder. I'm not really the builder, but it's my project, so I had to make sure everything was done properly. And it's a huge project, I asked the person in charge of doing the building, "Are you sure it's going to be ready by Easter 2008 or nine or 12? What was it, about 12/13 years ago? 2008. Are you sure it's going to be ready?" He said, "Yes! No trouble at all! Well ahead of schedule." And I should know by now. I'm really stupid. I trust people too much. Because it wasn't. It was a real rush. Especially the last day. We're going to have the opening ceremony, it was on the Easter retreat. And we're going to have it on Friday, the Good Friday. And we invited even the the former Premier, Geoff Gallop. He was gonna, he still is the what do you call it? The patron of Jhana Grove Retreat Centre. And he was gonna come and open it for us. And as soon as the opening was finished, we're gonna have our retreat, the 8/9 day retreat, and we had all this ceremony all arranged. And you know what happened? You know what happened? It wasn't finished. Thursday evening. Half the floor had not been laid. It was just concrete. Half the floor was finished. Half the floor was bare concrete. We tried to get floor makers in to come and finish it off for us. Would they work on Thursday evening, before the long weekend? No way. So what happened? Duh duh duh, in come the monks like the seventh cavalry to save the day again. And it was brilliant. It's beautiful. Ajahn Brahmali and Ajahn Santutthi, they were the main collaborators. They worked till 4am. All night. 4am. And that's a beautiful job they did. If you sit on that, when every time I see that, I feel so much joy and happiness. Just finishing off like that. They had a lot of fun. A lot of joy, not sleeping, working hard. Had an hour or two to sleep before we started the ceremony in the morning, big ceremony all day. Have a look at it. It's gorgeous. That is how we work. Do we get paid? Imagine if we did get paid. There'll be it's Easter. So that's double time. Overnight, that's double time again. So, night time work, oh, they could have made a fortune. If we were paid. But we don't do that. Do it for the fun of it, the joy of it because you don't have fault finding. You have the opposite. Joy finding, beauty finding. And that's one of the reasons why we don't get paid, we get exploited. Please exploit us some more. We don't think like other people. So instead, we just see the joy of doing these things and the wonder of doing these things, which means the fault fighting is not there. So we don't get upset and don't argue. And if you notice carefully, there is a mistake in that floor. Have any of you seen it? It's in the corner, which is closest to the entrance door. Doesn't quite match. But that's beautiful. It doesn't have to match and be perfect.

▶ Watch Ajahn Brahm tell it from 12:59 (to 17:18)

A reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

The night before Jhana Grove's official opening, half the meditation hall floor was bare concrete, so two monks laid it themselves until four in the morning, joyfully and unpaid. One corner near the door doesn't quite match. That's beautiful too. Most people never notice our flaws; we are our own harshest critics.

In brief (our summary)

Building Jhana Grove for an Easter 2008 opening by its patron, former Premier Geoff Gallop, Ajahn Brahm is assured it will be ready well ahead of schedule. On the Thursday evening before Good Friday half the bamboo floor of the meditation hall is still bare concrete, and no floor-layer will work before the long weekend. So 'in come the monks like the seventh cavalry': Ajahn Brahmali and Ajahn Santutthi work until 4 a.m. and finish it — unpaid, and in joy, at what would have been quadruple time. There's still one mismatched corner near the entrance door, and that's beautiful too.

Teaching point

Work done in joy rather than fault-finding gives energy; and small imperfections don't spoil the whole.

When this story may help

Themes

Source & credit

Told by Ajahn Brahm in The Fault Finding Mind | Ajahn Brahm | 7 May 2021 · 2021-05-07 · ▶ watch from 12:59 to 17:18 · Buddhist Society of Western Australia

2 other tellings of this story

Caption notes: Manual (volunteer) captions; occasional misspellings kept as is.

The narrative is Ajahn Brahm's own telling, quoted from the talk captions. The summary and reflection are Being Mindful Stories's editorial notes. Please credit the teacher and link the original talk. Markdown version

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