Meditating mum — knife and gas threats

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• Telling the kids what their dad got up to

  In brief: Visiting his brother, Ajahn Brahm tells his young nephew and niece about all the naughty things their father did at their age; fascinated,…

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  I did that to my brother once I was visiting him he had you know a son and a daughter they're about you know six and eight or something and I still my brother was doing something else in his house and I started talking about to my nephew and niece what my brother got up to when he was their age all the naughty things he did and they were really fascinated tell us some more about our dad because he never tells us that foreign and then he came into the room he said what are you telling my children I've been doing all these years trying to teach them not to do those things which he did himself and I knew because I was there at the time

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• The boy who stretched his seedlings

  In brief: One of Ajahn Brahm's first meditation teachers recalls planting seeds with his father at five or six. After three days with nothing…

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  there's a story of one of my first meditation teachers in Thailand he told me I usually tell this on the meditation Retreats not usually on a Friday night he told me when I was starting out my meditation career that when he was a young boy in Thailand that his father gave him some seeds to grow in the garden he was only about five six years of age and this was the first time he grew anything so this little five or six put his little seeds with the help of his father underneath the ground underneath the soil and he would water them every day after 3 or 4 days he saw no result said where are my plants where my flowers is three days now can't see anything his father had to tell him that when you have seeds when the water gets to them they germinate they split the seed a little green shoe comes out it's probably under the ground right now pushing its way to the surface just wait for a little while and you'll see a shoot be patient and he took his father's advice and fortunately at the end of two days a tiny green shoot was appearing above the Earth so so he decided to water those flowers two times a day he was getting excited and those flowers grew grew grew until about 2 in high and that's when he lost his patience he decided to stretch them to make them grow faster and he killed every one of them but he learned a wonderful lesson you can't stretch nature nature takes its time to grow

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• Class A and Class B

  In brief: An English school splits a year group into two classes of exactly equal ability by exam score — only the headmistress and two…

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  This was a story of a test which was done in a school in England. Two classes of kids, the end of the year exams, you know, we just done the end of the year exams for our kids in school here in Western Australia. The school year is just finished or about to finish. And it's usually the usual thing is on the basis of the results this year, you know, that's how you'll be graded for, you know, the streams of learning for next year. And there was one school did this really interesting experiment. They had two classes in one year and having done their examination, they never published the results. There was, if I remember correctly, the head mistress and two psychologists were the only ones who knew what scores every kid got. But instead, what they did, they allocated the children as evenly as they possibly could. The kid who came top went in the same class as a kid who came fifth and sixth. No, fourth and fifth. Yeah. Fourth and fifth, 8th and 9th, 12th and 13th, 16th and 17th. They all went in one class. The kids who came second and third, sixth and seventh, 10th and 11th went in the other class. So they split the classes up as evenly as they possibly could. And the head mistress tried to find teachers who she thought were equally good. And they even went as far as to find classrooms with equal facilities. They made everything equal as possible except for one thing. They called one of those classes class A and the other one class B. And they were totally equal in ability based on the exam results. and they wanted to find out what would happen next year. Half of those kids went into class A and they weren't more brilliant, but their parents said, "I don't know how you did it, son. You're in class A. Carry on. Well done." And even the kids who came second and third going into class B. I want you to work harder next year. You know, no more privileges for you, more homework. the the parents thought class B meant the worst and even the teachers taught her to a lower level and the kids be know with her in class B the kids started to believe the class A kids were superior than the class B kids because one year later when they gave the exam again the children in class A did so well as if they were the top half chosen from the year before. And the class B kids did terribly. Literally after one year, half those children became class A children and the other one became class B simply because they gave that label and they believed in it, they became it.

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• The honey and the milk

  In brief: In parallel supermarket checkout aisles, at almost the same moment, one child drops a jar of honey and another drops a carton of milk —…

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  And this was an example of the two children at the supermarket checkout, they were in parallel lanes. And almost exactly the same time, one child took out a carton of milk from the trolley, and he dropped it on the ground, and it went "splat" all over the floor, making a whole mess. And his mum said, "you stupid child". Almost exactly the same time in the parallel aisle, another child, they picked up the jar of honey. And it was slippy they dropped it. And they went "smash" all over the floor. But that mother, because she must have come to the Buddhist Society in Nollamara. That mother, she didn't say, "you stupid child". She said, "that was a stupid thing you did." And we emphasise the huge difference between those two responses. Now, if you examine it, you call, that's your "stupid child", it's as if they are totally stupid. They're, like, totally sort of corrupt, that when they were made, there must be some genetic malfunction that they are actually stupid. They're permanently stained with stupidity. And that's that first child. And many of you can recognise, such reactions when you make a mistake, and someone calls you stupid, someone calls you dumb. Someone calls you all these things. And what they're saying is, you're fatally flawed. There's nothing worth redeeming in you. And you know what it's like when that happens to you. You feel totally diminished, totally hopeless. You lose all your self esteem and that's no way to bring up a child. The other child received "that was a stupid thing you did". You're not a stupid kid. But, you had a moment of stupidity. And what that means is that you're recognising the truth, that was the sort of a silly thing to do to pick up that jar of honey making it all slippy. But, you're not a stupid person. There's more to you than that.

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