The suicidal spider — eight webs smashed

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• Depression privileges — a third bowl of ice cream

  In brief: He tells a depressed man not to advertise recovery too soon — wife and boss will put him back to work. The man later reports: when…

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  You got very many privileges being depressed." And I remember this because he told me afterwards, "Yes, so true. You know, this morning I had two bowls of ice cream. My wife would never let me have two bowls of ice cream when I was okay. But now she thinks I'm depressed. Oh, you have a third bowl

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• The emperor's ring: “This too will pass”

  In brief: A young emperor feasts in good times and sulks in bad, so neither works; his ministers give him a ring engraved “this too will pass.”…

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  it's a powerful story, about an emperor, a young man who took over the kingdom when he wasn't really mature enough to know how to lead. And so whenever things were going well in his kingdom he'd always have celebrations and parties. And because he was spending too much resources and too much time celebrating, and not actually doing the running of the kingdom, the good times never lasted all that long. And when the terrible times, the bad times, bad economy, unrest, social disorder, whenever there was trouble in his kingdom he'd get so upset and depressed he'd stay in his room and sulk and cry, which meant he wasn't working during the difficult times. And the ministers they realised that their leader, their king, their emperor, wasn't really working properly, and that's the reason why there were too many bad times and not enough prosperous times. You can't just tell these people what to do. Even these ministers in the Howard Government, they can't tell John Howard what to do. They've got to be sneaky, they've got to be wise, and so what these ministers did, instead of telling their emperor what to do, they just went to a goldsmith, asked for him to make a ring, the only difference between that ring and ordinary rings was what was engraved on the outside, which was the words "this too will pass". And they gave that ring with the engraved words "this too will pass" to the emperor, told him to wear it on all occasions, that's all, and the emperor did. Whenever there were bad times he would look upon the ring, "this too will pass", he knew by nature he didn't have to force those negative emotions and those bad times out of his kingdom, he knew they would pass naturally. And because he knew the bad times would pass, it gave him what's called hope, and when there's hope we can work, where it's hopeless we think the grief is going to last forever, the broken heart was always going to be there, you'll never find another partner ever in life. Or you'll never find that money again on the stock market, or whatever it is your chance to win the cup is gone forever. When you think it's forever that just makes life hopeless and you don't work. You don't make kamma anymore. But when actually you have hope, there's always something you can do. It gives you that motivation to work even in difficult times of your life. And actually the reason I'm saying this was because the photograph someone sent me was actually from the graduation ceremony of Virginia Tech university, recently, and I think you all know what happened at Virginia Tech in April, I was in London at that time. I think it was 39 young men and women were shot down by that murderer? You know, while they were on campus. And at the graduation ceremony one of the graduates, you know the funny hats they wear, they're called mortarboards, with the flat top, on the top of his mortarboard he'd actually painted the words "this too will pass", in memoriam of the pain that had happened in that university in the biggest serial killer murder in United States history. That's why he said "I don't know whether this guy's read your book or what", by he's obviously got the message. And it is a powerful message because it gives you hope, it allows you to let these things pass away. So "this too will pass". The other part of that story, which is very valuable to consider, is that that emperor wore that ring not just in difficult times but also in the happy times as well. Because it's in the prosperous, happy, good times that we should always remember, "this too will pass". Because he knew that the happy prosperous times were also fragile, he had a few celebrations but not many, because he knew he had to work hard to make sure those prosperous happy good times lasted as long as they possibly can. And they did. He became a very successful and well-loved emperor because the bad times were very short and the happy long times were longer than anybody could ever remember.

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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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• Two bad bricks in the wall

  In brief: Building the broke new monastery at Serpentine, the ex-physicist monk lays his first brick wall with painstaking perfectionism — then sees…

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  The story of the two bad bricks in the wall, twenty six years ago, twenty seven years ago when we moved to Serpentine to build that monastery down there we had no money, we were broke, and because... we owed money for the land, there were no buildings on that property. So I had to learn how to build. And I was theoretical physicist before, ok, in my head doing sums all day. Now I had to get out there and get my hands dirty and mix concrete and lay bricks and put on a roof and do plumbing. Everything we did. And even to this day, if any of you going into that main hall in our monastery, I am the builder. My name is on the building license for that. And it's still standing so that's pretty good. [LAUGHTER] So in particular, this story I had to learn how to lay bricks. Laying bricks was not a simple thing to do, it may look easy but it's so hard to get everything level. But, as most people would be I was a perfectionist. I had to make sure that brick was perfectly level before I went onto the next one. Sometimes one corner was high, you'd knock it down and another corner would go up. You knock that corner down then it would go out of line. You knock it back into line thinking it was finished, you notice one of the corners was high again. It was just one of those jobs which, where you couldn't get everything in the right place but you kept on trying until you got it. It took a long time but it didn't matter cause I wasn't being paid. So I could take however long I wanted. And when I finished that wall, that first brick wall, like anybody else you were proud, finished, you stood back to look at it and admire it, and it was only then when it was finished I noticed that two bricks were crooked. All the other bricks were straight, two bricks were crooked. So what would you do? What I did was try and scrape the mortar out so I could reset the bricks so they could be perfect. But the mortar was hard, you couldn't scrape it out. And the other monk who was with me at the time, Ajahn Jagaro, I asked him look can we afford, can we please afford some dynamite so I blow it up and start again? Bulldozer would do, push it over. Because...that spoiled the whole wall. Those two bad bricks, they ruined the whole thing. But we couldn't, I was stuck with it, we were too poor to do anything with it. So for three months, every time I went passed that wall I saw my mistakes and I felt so sad. I'd stuffed up. And the worst thing about stuffing up when you're building everybody could see it, you can't hide it. It's a big wall, out there in the open. So, every time there was a visitor, I would actually volunteer to take them around so I could, you know, take them somewhere else so they wouldn't see my mistakes. At night time I'd have nightmares about that wall. I would, I'd dream of it, because I'd really made a big mistake and everybody could see it. And it was three months, roughly, I'm not quite sure it's a long time ago now, about three months somebody else was with me and they saw that wall and they said that's a beautiful wall. And I just couldn't believe what I'd heard because for three months I'd been suffering so much with that wall and they said it's a beautiful wall. My first reaction was to ask them are you visually impaired, are you blind, did you leave your glasses in the car? Can't you see those two bad bricks, the crooked ones. And what they said next just changed much of the way I look at life and stopped a lot of inherent depression in myself. What they said was yes I can see the two bad bricks, but I can also see the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks as well. And that really hit me, because I realised for three months I was blind. All I ever saw was my two mistakes and I just could not see all the beautiful perfect bricks which I had laid. And when that guy told me what about the nine hundred and ninety eight good bricks that was the first time in three months that I could actually see the bricks above, below, to the left and the right of my two mistakes. And I had to agree with the fellow, it was a beautiful wall, once I could see the whole picture.

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