The monastery monkey and the cheeky visitor

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• The birds queued — and punished the queue-jumper

  In brief: Near the Burmese border in hot season he put out a water bowl by a knothole. Birds of different sizes lined up in a queue; when one jumped…

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  to see all these birds of different sizes and species line up in a queue. Have you ever seen birds queuing? I have. And it was true. That's what they did. There are maybe eight or nine birds, maybe a dozen at the best, you know, and they were big ones, small ones, and they were sitting there just waiting until the one in front finished and then the next one would actually come in. And of course, it is fascinating. And then there was always every afternoon one bird would come in and would actually jump the queue and try and get in there first. Couldn't wait to have a bath or have a drink. Weird. But you know what the other birds would do? They would all get out of queue, jump on that Q jumper, [laughter] pick him and beat him and whatever. And that Q jumper would fly away. And then all those birds would queue up in exactly the order they were before. [laughter] It's unbelievable. Absolutely true. And so what that really did was, you know, increase your respect

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• Milk for the vegan cat

  In brief: Years ago, while vegetarian, Ajahn Brahm stays in a house whose owners are trying to make their cat vegan, feeding it soy milk. When they…

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  I had this when I was a vegetarian many years ago. I was staying in a house with a vegan cat. At least the owners tried to make get their cat to be vegan and they feed it soy milk. I was a vegetarian at the time. So when the owners weren't looking, I slipped the cat some milk. Oh, the cat really loved me for that. You know, some cow's milk instead of soy milk. That poor old cat.

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• Six months alone, and the kangaroos ate the pizza

  In brief: Sometime between 2000 and 2008 his year's sabbatical shrank to six months. Instead of touring, he stayed in a hut in the Serpentine forest…

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  I spent six months without seeing any human being, without talking to anybody else. What had happened was, I was supposed to have a sabbatical, a year off, but then it, one thing led to another, I can only have six months off, so you go anywhere in the world, where would you like to go for six months? I could go touring here, visiting this monastery or that monastery, but I said, "No." Why do people always have to seek for happiness somewhere else? Why can't I find that happiness right where I am in that monastery where I worked so hard to build it up? So I said, “No, I'm not going to seek for happiness contentment anywhere else,” I could go wherever I wanted to, but I decided to find the best happiness and truth and freedom and wisdom right here. So I had a hut in the forest in Serpentine and I stayed there for six months, never went anywhere except deeper and deeper inside.. And it was arranged that we had a box…, actually where's that box now? The box which…, I think it's over… Okay, still is there somewhere, anyway, we had a little box there, and in the morning, at a certain time, about 10:30, one of the monks would actually put my bowl with food in the box, and I'd know the time they were coming, so I knew to be in my hut, and afterwards I will go to the box, open it up, eat the food, and then wash the bowl, put it in the box there for the next day. So I never, it's much better than Uber Eats, it was “Monk Eats". I never got charged, I never saw anybody. So there I was, and they knew I was alive because they see my bowl, and the food was eaten, so and it could have been the Kangaroos, I suppose, eating the food, but no it was me, although sometimes, those kangaroos…, you know, that they're really really really smart, and they soon found out that I was, you know, in that hut, and sometimes you'd leave your food outside on the veranda, it's a walking path, and leave the bowl there just for a few minutes to go inside to get something 'cause I liked eating on the veranda at first, and you know what happened? You find a kangaroo with it's head inside my bowl, (laughs) taking the first choice of food before I ever got to it! And so I from that time I decided to, to eat inside my hut, and so even inside, but, you know, the window was open and the kangaroo will come up onto my path, and look at me through the window, and ahh… a poor kangaroo, so you know, you felt sort of some compassion for this poor.. They had plenty of grass, but then, I started by putting some healthy food outside, I remember, like a carrot, or some…, but you know, they weren't interested in that, you know the food they liked the most when I was on retreat? Pizza! Honest! (laughter) Like…, it was, I don’t know if it's healthy for them, but, you know, that's what the Kangaroos decided they wanted to eat, see a little kangaroo with a little pizza in their mouth, they loved that

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• A dog called Chemo

  In brief: A doctor friend in Melbourne has a big Labrador she named 'Chemo'. She was training it to visit hospital wards, because stroking a gentle…

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  there's one of my friends over in Melbourne, now that's Priya Mendes [?] and she’s got this big dog and it was Labrador wasn’t it, and when I saw it, I said “what's its name” and she gave it the name, she's a doctor, she gave it the name “Chemo”. Chemo the dog, that's a really weird name, why do you name it Chemo? She said “because I'm training this dog to be one of these dogs who goes into wards with people who are very, very sick, because we all know that if you take a little dog or a cat or a rabbit into a ward where people are very sick, just being able to pet that dog, to stroke it, have this beautiful soft animal in there, the compassion which a small animal or even a big animal generates amongst human beings has a very strong positive effect on people's recovery. They actually get better. Having a beautiful dog to play with in the ward, it makes you sort of, gets up all your, what's it called, the, not serotonin, all these endomorphines, all this beautiful health things in your body, you all know better than I do... but you know it really works. So that's why she called her dog Chemo because it was short for chemotherapy, that was a little joke, she's a good student of mine, has got a stupid sense of humor just like me. [laughter] So Chemo, Chemo the dog, and of course that dog went into so many wards in its life, healing people, helping people, that dog must have made huge amounts of good karma just by generating compassion in other beings.

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