Beeswax in the ears

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• Deep peace on a village-party night

  In brief: On a night of loud village celebrations, Ajahn Chah's mind settles three times into a deep, still peace in which the music is heard but…

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  Retold in our own words from Ajahn Chah's talk “Unshakeable Peace”, in The Teachings of Ajahn Chah (2007 web edition), pp. 516–519.

  Ajahn Chah once stayed in a forest monastery about half a mile from a village. One night after 11:00 the villagers were having a loud party while he did walking meditation. He had felt unusual since midday: few thoughts, relaxed and at ease. When he sat in his grass-roofed hut, the mind settled into a profound peace of its own accord. He could still hear the singing if he directed attention outward, or shut the sound out entirely; the knowing and the sound seemed side by side but not touching. He saw that when the apparent continuity of phenomena was cut, peace resulted, and he continued sitting in balance. When he later reclined to rest, just before his head met the pillow the awareness flowed inward of its own accord, as if down a cable to a switch; at the switch the body seemed to explode with a bang, then the mind went to a place nothing external could reach, stayed, and flowed back out unprompted. He wondered what it was, and an answer arose that such things happen of their own accord. A second time the mind flowed in, hit the same switch, and the body seemed to shatter into minute particles, then returned. A third time the whole cosmos seemed to disintegrate into space; people and the world disappeared, and the mind stayed inside longer than before, then came out by itself until ordinary consciousness returned.

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• The best boarding-house cook in England

  In brief: At 19, dreading the 'stodge, stodge and stodge' of a Cambridge boarding house, Ajahn Brahm goes on his first nine-day retreat — and every…

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  One of the first times I realized this in my practice of meditation was the very first meditation retreat which I gave which I participated in. I was still a student only 19 years of age and a few of us hired a boarding house about two or three boarding houses in Cambridge. It's amazing when you've got good meditation. It was in Baitman Street in Cambridge. That's maybe 39 years ago. Haven't thought of that name for such a long time. It's amazing when you meditate your memory gets incredibly strong. You remember details a long time ago clearly in those boarding houses of Bman Street.

  We meditated for 9 days. But before I went on that boarding house retreat, I did it with some trepidation cuz I like my food. And I knew as a fact already the cooks in England were somewhere in the bottom of the league of European cuisine. Apparently cooking in UK has improved since those years. But the English were not known for their cooking. Now, at the bottom of the pile of cooks were those who worked in boarding houses for poor students who couldn't afford to complain. And I knew from experience that these cooks would usually every evening cook a three course meal.

  Stod, stodge, and stodge. Doesn't matter what vegetable it was, it was boiled so long it tasted the same. And if you know England in those years, you would know what I'm talking about. So I thought I'm going to have a terrible time in this retreat with food. It's just going to be really awful. But I was surprised during that period of retreat. Every evening the food was delicious. It was very tasty. At the time I thought I just must be lucky. My good karmas meant we've got the best boarding house cook in the whole of England.

  Now I know much better. The food was just ordinary food. But because I was practicing meditation, because I was becoming still, my mind was increasing in energy. So much so that the small amount of taste which was left in there, I could pick up. And now I know for a fact that whenever you go on a retreat, the food always tastes better than normal. Doesn't matter who the cook is, cuz it's not the food or the cook, it's your mind.

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• The boy who stretched his seedlings

  In brief: One of Ajahn Brahm's first meditation teachers recalls planting seeds with his father at five or six. After three days with nothing…

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  There's a story of one of my first meditation teachers in Thailand, he told me. I usually tell this on the meditation retreats, not usually on a Friday night, he told me when I was starting out my meditation career. That when he was a young boy in Thailand, that his father gave him some seeds to grow in the garden. He was only about five, six years of age, and this was the first time he grew anything.

  So this little five or six put his little seeds with the help of his father underneath the ground, underneath the soil. And he would water them every day. After 3 or 4 days, he saw no result, said where are my plants where my flowers is three days now? Can't see anything? His father had to tell him that when you have seeds, when the water gets to them, they germinate, they split the seed. A little green shoot comes out. It's probably under the ground right now, pushing its way to the surface. Just wait for a little while and you'll see a shoot, be patient.

  And he took his father's advice, and fortunately, at the end of two days, a tiny green shoot was appearing above the earth. So he decided to water those flowers two times a day, he was getting excited and those flowers grew. Grew, grew until about 2 in high. And that's when he lost his patience. He decided to stretch them, to make them grow faster, and he killed every one of them.

  But he learned a wonderful lesson. You can't stretch nature. Nature takes its time to grow.

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• Meditating through the flood

  In brief: An Indonesian monk Ajahn Brahm knew and questioned tells him that as a layman wanting to be a rishi he went deep into the Javanese jungle…

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  There's one of these monks I knew. He has passed away now. But when he was alive, I met him, talked with him, checked out what he was up to, and this wasn't one of those real things. He was an Indonesian monk. Anyone here from Indonesia, from Java? There's a few people here anyway. They're not omitting it. But anyway, this guy, he wanted to be a rishi. And I remember this story because we got a book about Rishies a few days ago. And so he went in to a very remote place in the island of Java into a jungle and he went there and sat meditation.

  He was a lay person, not a monk yet. And he told me, this is what he said to me. His English wasn't the best, but it made a lot of sense. He was sitting there, got very peaceful, and this like star came into his mind and I love the way he said this. He married that star like United with it, and then when he came out of his meditation, he noticed he didn't know how long. Don't have clocks or watches. He noticed the jungle looked very different to when he first started to meditate.

  There'd be lots of damage to the trees and the branches, and lots of leaves where they shouldn't be. But anyway, he got up and he walked to the nearest village and they were surprised because where he had sat the damage was there had been a flood for many days and he'd been underwater about four or five days. He didn't know a thing about it. He would just blissing out inside.

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