Loose robes at the yacht club

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• Engine running in Northbridge

  In brief: On a day out on business, a driver takes Ajahn Brahm to a Northbridge shop for 'the best pies in Perth' (just okay, he says — the only…

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  he decided to take me into this little shop in Northbridge, in Newcastle Street, which sold, he said, the best pies in Perth. So he took me in there, and just after it was it was okay pie, not that great, but you know, it was good enough. I'm very easy to please. The only pies I don't like are magpies. Don't [laughter] eat them. No, they're okay, little magpies. But anyway, that was a joke, by the way. Pies, okay. So anyway, the There I was uh uh After we After we finished the meal, then the driver, he couldn't find the keys to the car. He said, "Where are they?" And so we I really can't find them. So we decided now to retrace our steps, go to the car to see if he dropped them somewhere. You know what had happened? When I got to the car first, the car doors were open. The engine was running cuz the keys were still in the ignition. This was in Northbridge. [laughter] And I don't know what it is. Sometimes if a thief had gone past, he thought, "This can't be happening. This can't be real. No one This must be a trick. This must be a trap." Because who would leave the car doors open for about half an hour, probably a bit longer, half an hour with the keys in ignition and the engine running? [laughter] In Northbridge.

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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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• The runaway car at Byford

  In brief: Years ago, while Ajahn Brahm and a driver queue in the Byford post office, someone asks whose car is rolling down the South Western…

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  that some years ago just uh the local post office was over in Byford. And you know, it wasn't so busy in those days, that road, the Southwest Highway. So, I remember we had to go to the post office. And so I went in there with the driver, different driver, but just the same same stupidity. I don't know why I was picked. Oh, the driver took me this morning is sitting over there, so I better not say this. But we went into the post office, and then trying to get in the queue, waiting for to do the um the business. And then they somebody came and said, "Oh, who's that Who's the owner of that car outside which is rolling down the Southwest Highway?" The driver forgot to put the brake on. And you wouldn't believe there was a gradient there. I know today it is a totally You know, you wouldn't believe it was going down a hill, but it certainly was because the car was going down the hill. And so in those days I was much fitter than these days. I was running after it. The Venerable Garrick, he was just way behind me. I had to run behind it and jump in and put the brake on. It was halfway down, and maybe went a hundred to two two hundred meters. And I wasn't the abbot then. In those days I was Ajahn Jagaro was the boss. So we never told him about that.

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• The postulant who tried too hard to be perfect

  In brief: A former monastery postulant tells Ajahn Brahm in Melbourne that he was so afraid of breaking a rule, controlling his body, speech and…

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  There was one of the men I saw in Melbourne, he used to be an Anagarika in my monastery down in Perth a long time ago. But he was saying when he was first there, he was trying so hard to be perfect. He was so afraid of breaking a rule. And that's why he got so tense trying to control his body, control his speech, control his mind. He got so tense, he couldn't stand it and he left.

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