Two monks tell each other who they are

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• “My nose is too big”

  In brief: In his first year in Perth a 13-year-old girl, brought by her father after every other psychologist and psychiatrist had failed, finally…

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  I still remember this when I first came to Perth the very first year this thirteen year old girl came to see me. Her father organised a meeting, she wanted counselling, she'd been to all the other psychologists, psychiatrists or whatever in Perth and this was the last resort to go and see a Buddhist monk. They must have been desperate in those days to come see a Buddhist monk. Because we didn't have much of a reputation and I asked her what's your problem and she took a long time to get it out of her cause you know when people really feel they have a big problem and they just don't want to share it with you especially a thirteen or fourteen year old young girl. And eventually I got it out of her. She said, looking down at the floor feeling so embarrassed, she said 'my nose is too big'. Now you know, you girls you know that, you know where she's coming from, that to her every time she looked in the mirror she saw her nose and it was too big. I tried to use like a scientific approach to her problem, you know I mentally I measured her nose and I've seen many noses in my life and I measured it in my mind and I told her, lady that your nose is pretty average. It's not the most beautiful nose, it's certainly not the most ugly nose, its just a nose, it's average ok. But she wouldn't accept that for her it was the biggest problem because it was right in front of her face. I didn't, I didn't actually help her, but she helped me to understand the negativity of fault finding.

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• “Thank you, I do deserve this medal”

  In brief: At the annual John Curtin Medal ceremony, a woman with decades of community service insists others deserve it more — just as Ajahn Brahm…

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  Because four years ago on that day the John Curtin University gave me this medal, the John Curtin medal, which is actually for community service, for doing good things for other people. And the first year after I got the medal I thought well, other people came to see me get a medal. I should go and see them. So I rocked up thinking I was just doing a duty, but I really was impressed with what I saw because there were people who'd done good things for the world, especially just this part of the world; and they were getting rewarded. I was just really impressed every year to see how people were really giving and serving for others. It was inspiring, so I've gone every year since. Just a couple weeks ago there was one lady there who'd done a huge amount around the Kalamunda area for the local community, but when she got her medal she came up to give a little speech and she said "I don't know why you've given it to me. There are so many other people who are much more deserving than me and even in my group, these other people work much harder than I do in this group. I've founded it and led it but.." And she was saying all this stuff and I remembered "oh here we go again - why can't you see that actually you do deserve that," because when I was listening to what she did -- she's an amazing woman -- how much she'd given and sacrificed and served for no reward through 30 or 40 years of her life she'd given to others. I thought wow you really deserve that medal. But could she say she deserved it? No. I did the same when I got my medal. "What the heck are you giving it to me for? There are many other people who work harder than me." Me, too, I could not see the beauty in myself. Really what I should've done was go up there and say "Thank you very much, I do deserve this medal." [laughter] But it was true, I did deserve it And she deserved it.

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• Married 25 years and strangers on holiday

  In brief: After about 25 years of marriage, when the last child leaves home, a couple take their first holiday alone together. One says afterwards…

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  somebody, actually it's a person who is a old fellow member here, they told me that I think they had been married for about 25 years and the last of their children got married, so left home And there they were together, so went on a holiday together. First time they could go just the two of them and they came back afterwards and one of the partners said it was such a shock such a shock, I didn't realize whom I was married to all these years. Because for all those years they have been relating to each other as father and mother of their kids. Now their kids were out of the equation, the whole relationship, the whole identity changed. They had to rediscover each other again. It is amazing they had been married for so many years and they said they didn't know each other.

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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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