Penance: a carrot for the rabbit

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• Fifty strokes of the cat

  In brief: A new postulant confesses to secretly making an afternoon sandwich and, refusing Ajahn Brahm's gentle advice, insists on a penance or…

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  is a story many years ago of one of the anagarikas one of the people in white who's trained to be a monk at Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine. When you become a monk you have to train for a minimum of two years beforehand, one year wearing white keeping eight precepts, the next year in brown keeping ten precepts, and afterwards after two years maybe you can ordained as a full monk. There was one young man, an Australian man who was starting his training as an anagarika, eight precepts. One of those precepts is you're not allowed to eat any solid food from noon until the dawn the following day, you can't eat in the afternoon or night time. So I was the abbot, one afternoon this new anagarika, a young man, came up to me and said, "I have something to confess, I've done a terrible crime. I know you're gonna probably throw me out of the monastery and not let me be a monk, because one afternoon I was hungry, I went into the kitchen with no one seeing me and made myself a sandwich." [laughter] And to him it was like some capital offense. And so what did I do? I told him, I said, "It doesn't matter, thank you for letting me know, now maybe eat some more food at lunchtime, you know before lunch when we have our meal, eat some more so you won't be hungry in the afternoon. If you are hungry you can have some cup of tea with some sugar, some fruit juice or some chocolate, so you don't have to eat in the afternoon. So it was a mistake, you admit it, have some strategies in place so it doesn't happen again. Okay, you can go now." This young man looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, that's not good enough." [laughter] He said, "If you don't punish me I will do it again." [laughter] "I need a penance." Because he knew himself, he spent all his life only being trained by punishment. He said, "If you let me go like that I'm sure one day I will do it again." So I had to think very quickly of a solution to that problem. As it was, I'd been reading a book, a very well-known Australian book called "Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes, which was telling the early history of Australia. I got to that point about the convicts who were here in Australia, and the harsh punishments meted out to them. So I looked at that young man in white clothes with a bald head and I said, "If you want a punishment I will give you a traditional Australian penance... "50 strokes of the cat." This young man, his face went whiter than the clothes he was wearing. 'Cause he didn't know too much about Buddhism and he thought, "Oh, my god, Ajahn Brahm is gonna whip me, he's gonna lash me." [laughs] But then I told him what "50 strokes of the cat" means in a Buddhist monastery. We have three cats in our monastery, choose whichever one you want and stroke it 50 times, "there cat, there pussy ... three, four." Learn some compassion and kindness 'cause that's the only thing which will overcome your need for punishment and pain. It's because you don't know kindness and compassion that you think that fear is the only way to train you. I said, "We don't do fear, we do compassion and kindness."

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• Puppies for young offenders

  In brief: Ajahn Brahm reads that Western Australia gave repeat juvenile offenders, aged 16 or 17 and beyond the reach of counsellors, a puppy each…

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  I read it in the newspaper in the local Western Australia. There's some really smart person here in this state, there're lots of smart people in government. Rare, but there are some. [laughter] Decided to take some of these juvenile offenders who got into all sorts of trouble with the law. Instead of like bagging them up in a jail again, or giving them counsellors because sometimes the counsellors can't do anything either. Instead, they gave them dogs. They assign every one of these really bad juvenile offenders, a little puppy to look after, to train. And the results were incredible. And they were saying instead of like a counsellor, another human being. Yeah, they've been there. They've done that. They went to sort of to that little puppy little dog to train and to get to know and every time they went to this session with their puppy, the puppy would jump all over them and lick them. No counsellor ever does that. [laughter] Not even a monk does that. I'm not going to lick you. But, these dogs would do that. And they just melted some of these really repeated offenders. And they were just only 16 or 17 and gone through just a lot, a lot of therapies, and that really got to them.

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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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• The camel's one more round

  In brief: A man who told Ajahn Brahm the story after hearing the Nandivisāla tale arrived late at a primary-school fete in a park, longing for a…

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  And this guy he he he was helping at like a school fate raising money for the local primary school. I don't know why they have to raise money for the local primary school. They always manage to find enough money for nuclear submarines and other stuff they buy. But you know, schools, you have to raise your own money. But they're raising money in the local park. And one of the things they had, one of the fundraising initiatives was camel rides. Have you ever been on a camel ride? Anyway, this guy always wanted to go on a camel ride, but when he got to the park, it was really late and they're about to close up and it was been a really, really hot day. So, I thought, well, you know, just can I just have the last camera ride, please? And the guy who was organizing it said, I'm sorry, but the camera's been working hard all day, and the poor camel is really tired. It's been very hot. and we've got enough money now for the you know the school so sorry you missed out and this guy looked at the camel and looked at the man and said look you know it's not just for the sake of money but it's something I always wanted to do in life to ride a camel and you know I can pay double triple I don't care about the money just can I please ride that camel and apparently said the man who was organized this looked up in the up at the camel, looked in the eyes. It was, you know, he's almost like a pet, almost part of the family. Looked at the camel and said, "Dear camel, this gentleman's come such a long way. And I know that you've worked so hard and you're really tired. I'm tired, too. Would you mind? Just one more round." And of course, the camel went straight down. And he jumped on its back and the clam lifted up. One more round out of kindness.

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