Ask the dog

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• She asked the dog if it wanted to die

  In brief: A committee member's dog has cancer; the vet wants to euthanize. She asks for a few minutes, looks the dog in the eyes and asks if it…

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  There's one of our members here years ago. She had this beautiful dog and the dog had cancer and the dog got such excellent care, expensive, but this uh girl didn't mind sort of spending money on her dog. And of course, he went took her to the do the vet and the vet said, [gasps] "Can't do anything more. Your dog's in pain. Can I sort of uh euthanize it? I mean, kill it. Yeah. And the woman, she'd been here so many times, she's actually one of our committee members years ago. And so he said, "Uh, can I please just have a few minutes with my dog?" And then after spending a few minutes with the dog, she went back to the vet and said, "No, I won't allow you to euthanize a dog." And the vet was shouted at her and scolded her. You Buddhists are just so selfish about your own religious views, not caring about the dog. But she stood her ground and said, "I'm taking it home." Now, what had happened? She'd heard what we taught here so many times that she took that dog in her arms in a quiet space, looked her dog in the eyes, [snorts] and asked the dog, "Do you want to die? Have you had enough? It's not my decision. It's yours. And whatever you tell me, I'll tell the vet. It's wrong to kill another being, but it's okay to ask them what they want to do and tell that to the vet. And she said, "I got the message back from the dog. It's your dog, your cat. You've you've been with them. You love them. If you ask the question, you'd feel what the answer is. It's very clear. No, I don't want to die. And she took the scolding from the vet. But 6 months later, she took the dog back to the vet, was in full remission, all by itself, and the vet said, "Oh, you Buddhists are so wise and kind."

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• The monkey who knocked on the monk's door

  In brief: An old monk living alone in a bamboo-and-thatch hut deep in the jungle hears a knock one night. At the door is a monkey from the forest…

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  And there was a story this old monk told me. This old monk was he told some wonderful stories. He was living by himself in a bamboo and thatch hut in the middle of the jungle many years ago. He said even one evening late at night there was a knock on his door and he who's knocking on the door. No one comes here at nighttime. And he said that when he opened the door there was a a monkey who was holding a little dead baby. a dead baby monkey in her arms. And he realized this was one of the the monkeys in the forest around him who had lost her kid. And what does the monkey know what to do? He gave it to the monk or she gave it to the monk almost asking the monk, "Can you do something to bring my baby back to life?" And the monk just, you know, looked at the the baby monk. It was dead. no possibility of reviving it. But at least did some chanting and after doing the little chanting for the baby monkey gave the little baby back to its mom and the m monkey just obviously had very wet eyes just went away. which is like how sort of people live in the forest a long time. Actually, you actually the animals get to know you and somehow other this griefstricken mother monkey thought that maybe the monk could do something but it couldn't.

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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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• The cat that went to heaven

  In brief: From a little book over 100 years old by a Western lady living in Japan (as he recalls): a destitute painter is commissioned to paint the…

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  that book about the cat that went to heaven book. It's one of my favorite little books and I did get the library to purchase a few of them but they all tend to disappear because it's inspiring books. All it is is a story. It's over 100 years old now that book. It says western lady living in Japan about this painter who was really destitute and there was a a competition to actually to do a painting of the Lord Buddha's uh paranana and all the animals who came to worship at the Buddha's feet just before he passed away. That was in the Japanese Buddhist tradition. And this painter got given the contract. It was just a wonderful thing for him. So every day he would meditate and then he would paint. First the Buddha and then an elephant and a horse and a lion. All these animals mentioned in the suitors. But there was also a little cat who would every day sit next to the painter. And every day the cat seemed to get more sad because the cat would never see himself in that painting. And when the pager had finished the very last animal in there, that little cat looked so incredibly sad. He looked at the cat and the cat looked at him. He said, "If I paint you in that painting, you will never be accepted. cat never visited the Buddha. But then he looked at the cat. Oh, what the heck? And he painted the cat in bed. And as soon as the housekeeper saw that he'd broken the tradition and put a cat, you know, in this picture, his housekeeper thought, "We're ruined. You spoiled it all those weeks." But anyway, it was finished. So one of the monks came from the temple, took one look at it. Very well done. What have you done putting a cat in this picture? So the monk said, "We will take it to the temple, but we'll burn it tomorrow morning. We can't use it. It's untraditional." And so the whole little family there. Oh, I should have mentioned as soon as soon as the cat saw its image, the very last um animal on the the line, the cat saw its image on the the painting. It got so happy its heart burst with joy. It died out of happiness, sheer bliss. So they lost the cat. But anyway, the following morning that the the priest and said, "Come to the temple now. You got to come now." When he went to the temple, a huge throng of people there, monks from all the temples in town were there who saw his painting and been burnt. and he saw where he painted the the cat. The cat had vanished. There's no cat at the end of the painting. He followed the line of animals in front of the elephant. The first animal there was the cat and the hand on top of the cat.

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