Move huts every two years — by wheelbarrow

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• Walking off with everything he owned on his back

  In brief: After five years as a monk in Thailand (around 1979) Ajahn Brahm leaves his monastery to wander on foot. Nothing can be stored, so he must…

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  One of my most memorable experiences in my training as a monk after 5 years being a monk in these monasteries in Thailand you are expected, encouraged to actually leave the monastery, just go wondering on foot. Its a great opportunity to visit other teachers' You have been in a one monastery and to see how the other teachers teach To get a wider experience or may be go and find some solitude in the jungles or the mountains That was after five years--what would that be 1979 or something; somewhere around then. I left the monastery; and the rule was you couldn't store anything there. You can give it away but once you gave it away nothing would be kept for you. So everything which was yours you had to carry with you. And of course if you are walking especially through the hot tropics carrying lots and lots of stuff is just really really unpleasant. It was reminding you how much a burden your possessions were. So after a couple of days, you gave this away and you gave that away and you are down to the absolute minimum you needed Once you got down to that minimum, my goodness it was so light. You can imagine the experience. Just put yourself in that experience that everything you own you are carrying on your back and it's light. And you can dance, there is hardly any burden there at all. Because as a monk we knew that, there are monasteries everywhere any place you go you can get a bed for the night. If you don't get a bed for the night you can sleep under a tree. Its the tropics, it is easy to do. You can go anywhere, you get something to eat, not delicious food but enough to keep you going through the day, there is waters in the well. There was this total sense of freedom freedom from possessions. And that was just like being in heaven. You didn't have any worries at all. You had cloths to wear, you had this little mosquito net umbrella which you could park anywhere to sleep at night. And the best thing about it; you had no appointments. Your future was blank. I could go anywhere I wanted. Every cross road, you can go left, go right, turn around, go forward, stay still No one was asking you to go anywhere, to do anything or be anything. That was one of my wonderful experiences of being free from attachments at all.

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• A monk costs less than a dog

  In brief: When monks of the tradition first went to England, supporters worried whether they could afford one. The head of the trust, an economist…

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  when the monks in this tradition first went to England, the people there were a bit concerned, I mean, can we... this was in the early days when there wasn't so many supporters. Now, can we afford to look after a monk? You know, how much does it cost to look after a monk and there was this guy he was, he became the head of this trust, which looked after our monastery in England. He was an economist, and he was actually on the board of the Bank of England. He was a professor at one of the universities in England. So you know, he really knew his stuff about economics, so he decided to work out before they invited any monks to their place. How much does it cost to look after a monk? And surprise, surprise, he found out that it's much cheaper to look after a monk or a nun than to look after a dog. Dogs are far more expensive.

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• Sleeping on a door with a hole in it

  In brief: In the first days of Bodhinyana Monastery the two monks sleep on doors propped on bricks; the senior monk gets the flat one, Ajahn Brahm…

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  when I first went to that monastery, the first night I was there, we had a door which I slept on. It was three bricks in each corner and a door. We only had two doors in that monastery. So we didn't sleep on the floor because there's lots of insects and animals that go biting you at night. It was this time of the year, just in January, hot and I was on the door. We only had two doors. Because I was the second monk, because of hierarchy, the senior monk got the flat door. I got the ones with the ribs on it, these houses had the ribs on the door. It's true, I'm not making it up, so I had ribs on the door. I was fortunate, there was one of the doors which the doorknob was actually in the centre of the door, rather than on the edge. So there was a big hole in the middle of the door. And being a positive thinker, I thought, well that's actually very good because that means I don't need to get up out of bed to go to the toilet. It's very, very good. I don't know why they don't make other beds like that, with a hole in the centre, a bucket underneath. You know what it's like getting these hot days or cold days, getting out of bed to go to the toilet.

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• “If only my house were this small”

  In brief: Showing a visiting local women's group his small monastery hut, Ajahn Brahm hears one woman say with envy: “Wow, if only my house were…

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  And I still remember about ten years ago taking a group of women who were visiting the monastery, it was a local women's group who wanted to do weird things on an afternoon and had never been to the monastery and that qualified being weird, and when I took them to see my hut my room, I always remember one of the girls turning around to me and saying 'wow if only my house were this small I get all my house work done in half an hour'.

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