# A hundred cakes and nowhere to sleep

- Teacher: Ajahn Brahm
- Type: Story
- URL: https://beingmindfulstories.com/stories/brahm-magnolia-cake-stall-aroma
- Themes: desire, monastic life, humour, beginnings
- Life situations: temptation, early monastic life

## Synopsis (editorial summary)

For a Serpentine monastery fundraiser, about a hundred home-baked cakes fill the tiny Magnolia Street kitchen. Ajahn Brahm's bedroom is next door; all night he smells fresh cake he is not allowed to eat — the most tortured evening of those early years.

## The story, as told by Ajahn Brahm (verbatim captions)

Actually, you know, the worst suffering I ever had when I first came here just to that was this house in Magnolia Street, North Perth where we first lived. Cuz one day they were doing they were doing this fundraiser for our the monastery down at Serpentine. They decided to have a cake stall. So one Friday night it's only a small house in a really small house in North Perth. And everybody brought these cakes, you know, home baked cakes and they put them you know, in the kitchen. Maybe about 100 cakes there. You know what a freshly baked baked cake uh smells like? And everybody went home after the Friday evening. And I went into the room right next to the kitchen. That was my bedroom where I slept. You couldn't sleep. You had all this aroma freshly baked cakes in your room and you couldn't eat any of them and it's really unfair. And all you could smell all night is like the smell of freshly baked cakes. That was the most tortured evening I ever had. You can smell them. You can't eat them.

## Teaching point

Told with humour: sense desire plus a precept can be its own torture chamber.

## Reflection (in the spirit of Ajahn Brahm's talk)

A hundred fresh cakes for a fundraiser filled the tiny kitchen beside young Ajahn Brahm's bedroom, and monks can't eat after noon. All night he smelt them; his most tortured evening, he laughs. Even now he travels without insurance, trusting strangers' kindness. Some desires are best met with a smile.

## Source

- [Trust | Ajahn Brahm | 01-04-2011](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ4r0C3IcWU) (Buddhist Society of Western Australia) — watch from 31:40 to 32:53: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZ4r0C3IcWU&t=1900s