All stories, A–Z
1,224 Buddhist wisdom stories, analogies and jokes — page 2 of 13. Browse by theme or life situation, or describe your situation to get a match.
B
- Bungee jumping looked like torture — At Adventure World Bibra Lake he first sees bungee jumping and thinks it is how interrogators…
- “But I'm alive — it was my husband who died!” — At a funeral Ajahn Brahm eulogises the wrong parent; the very-much-alive mother stands up at the…
- “But there were so many other robberies I got away with” — After the class an old prisoner earnestly tells Ajahn Brahm he's in jail for a robbery he didn't…
C
- Calendar method — odd days she is right — Marriage-harmony joke: on odd days of the month the wife is always right; on even days the husband…
- Cambridge Botanical Gardens — first bamboo clump — Student days near Baitman Street, Cambridge: first day in the Botanical Gardens he finds a bamboo…
- Cambridge medicine — then mowing lawns — One of Ajahn Brahm's best school friends won a place to study medicine at Cambridge, started on…
- Can a mousetrap kill a cow? — Farm mice befriend chicken, pig and cow; ignoring the mousetrap leads to chain of deaths — Brahm…
- Can I ask a meditation question — in the toilet? — After a long Jockey Club auditorium talk and an hour of book-signing he finally reaches the gents;…
- Can I have a pineapple, please? — At poor Wat Pah Pong, requisites were kept in a big water jar and you asked Ajahn Chah for what…
- Can I play for the other side? — In his last ever soccer match, for his Cambridge college, the other team turns up with only nine…
- Can I please have one hour of your time? — A tired father snaps when his six-year-old asks how much he earns per hour, then guiltily answers…
- “Can meditation teach you to fly over walls?” — On his first prison visit, at the old Canning Vale jail, over a hundred of about 110 prisoners…
- Can we build that hall your way — and can I be the builder? — Ajahn Brahm's last real argument was with then-abbot Ajahn Jagaro over the design of Bodhinyana's…
- “Can you tell my parents for me?” — A girl who has come to the Perth temple since she was a toddler comes to Ajahn Brahm at 16 or 17:…
- Cards from the primary school — Arriving early at Karnet prison farm, Ajahn Brahm is dragged by a prisoner, Nick, to a board…
- Carrying coffins of dead moments — He compares obsessing over the past to carrying coffins of dead moments: cultures bury or cremate…
- Cassius Clay's autograph — At 11, Ajahn Brahm heard that Cassius Clay — later Muhammad Ali — was training at the White City…
- Cattamalo's real worry about the tsunami — Ajahn Brahm is in Penang (he first says Phuket) when the 2004 tsunami hits. Afterwards he learns…
- Caught with his trousers down in the bushfire — An Iranian ex-Muslim convert (named Muhammad, barred from a KL Buddhist talk, renamed in…
- Celebrate the ending of the stuck song — After years without music in a NE Thai forest, a Bangkok visa trip lets a pop song stick in his…
- Chanting brought the Dhammasara price down — Looking at a noisy 38-acre option for the nuns, they notice a 583-acre property of solitude…
- Chanting for a dying mother in Singapore — In Singapore a woman asks Ajahn Brahm to chant for her mother, just home from hospital and…
- Charlie's mark on the heel — A healthy Thai woman's first baby, Charlie, is stillborn after turning in the womb days before…
- Chicken or duck? — A newly married couple walking home from the temple hear 'quack quack'. She says, 'Darling, that's…
- Chicken-shit currency — Ajahn Chah's prediction — Chah predicts future currency will be pellets of chicken shit — bosses earn the most shit, IMF…
- Christmas cards to the adversaries — Huge clay trucks with trailers thunder down the steep, narrow road past Bodhinyana; Ajahn Brahm…
- Christopher Nightingale and the tin-can bomb — At age ten, Ajahn Brahm and his chemistry-wizard friend Christopher Nightingale make a bomb in a…
- Churchill's bedside Buddha — An Australian monk visiting England is taken to Churchill's stately home when a castle is closed.…
- Class A and Class B — An English school splits a year group into two classes of exactly equal ability by exam score —…
- Club Med versus Club Meditation — Someone shows him a Club Med holiday schedule packed with yoga, scuba, activities and a nightclub…
- Coffee for “the Dog” — A prisoner who hates the cruel officer he must serve coffee — the man who deliberately made…
- Coffee for the new boss — A listener's former colleague is promoted and becomes a harsh, scolding boss. Advised by Ajahn…
- Coffee with a control freak — Someone invites you for coffee then dictates Gloria Jeans not Dome, latte not cappuccino, Anzac…
- Come have some sake — the old man on the train — Martial-arts student on a crowded Japanese train is about to fight a drunk who shoved a pregnant…
- Complaining about the wall — Walking from his mother's flat in London to give a talk, Ajahn Brahm passed two young men waiting…
- Coralie wrestled him into a funeral hug — At Clem Kentish's funeral his daughter Coralie (farm girl who wrestled sheep) insisted on hugging…
- Cough once, get eight bottles of medicine — Once in Australia Ajahn Brahm coughs at the start of a talk. By the end there are eight or nine…
- Cough straight away — Simile: if you feel like coughing while meditating, cough straight away. Suppress it, and when the…
- Crocodiles sleep with their mouths open — NE Thailand folk: lazy crocodiles sleep mouths open; flies walk in by themselves — no hunting…
- Crunchy frog and the bladder on the rice — Early Thai forest austerity: Monty Python 'crunchy frog' becomes real — sticky rice and…
- Cursed in the market — With an afternoon off, a husband in Asia goes to the market for eggs for his wife, with a basket,…
D
- Dad always lost at cards on purpose — Poor though he was, his father gave pocket money by playing cards with the boys and always losing…
- Dad walks into the spud-gun battle — Aged about 12, Ajahn Brahm brings friends home after school for a spud-gun war, chairs upside…
- Dad's 'Saturday injections' — At 10 or 11, Ajahn Brahm makes the primary-school football team, but his father must work Saturday…
- Daddy, what does tax mean? — A businesswoman aunt in Sydney who hated paying tax dies; soon after, the nephew's baby is born.…
- Darlington: the church or the gasworks? — On his first visit to England as a monk (seven or eight years ordained), touring northern groups…
- Darwin crows only die under trucks — On the Darwin highway the only roadkill noticed is crows — and only under trucks and buses, never…
- Death us do part — see you in heaven — Devoted couple reunite in heaven; he refuses her — the ceremony said death us do part, and they…
- Declining Amnesty International's dinner — Invited by Amnesty International to speak at a dinner for an anniversary of the Universal…
- Depression privileges — a third bowl of ice cream — He tells a depressed man not to advertise recovery too soon — wife and boss will put him back to…
- Dewdrop on the green hills nimitta — In early nimitta scenery — rolling green hills, trees, a valley river — Ajahn Brahm notices a…
- Dig a hole, boil the water — Early one morning a village headman tells Ajahn Chah a woman has been possessed all night;…
- Dismembered heads that could not be doubted — An article Brahm read describes someone who lived through schizophrenia and came out wise and…
- Dixon of Dock Green vs the new cop show — Visiting his mother in London after seven years without TV, he watches a half-hour cop show with…
- 'Do you know a famous monk called Ajahn Brahm?' — Trying to avoid pride, Ajahn Brahm sits incognito at the back of a Buddhist conference in Vietnam.…
- Do you know Ajahn Brahm? — asked on Adam's Peak — WA politician Mike Nahan told a BSWA gathering that climbing Adam's Peak (Sri Pada) in Sri Lanka,…
- “Doctor Buddha's orders” — A new Buddhist refuses a drink at a work party — 'I'm a Buddhist' — and a colleague replies that…
- 'Doctor, have you got anything for worms?' — A hypochondriac has every fashionable disease — each COVID variant, then monkeypox — and keeps…
- Doctor, there's something right with me — I'm sick — Instead of 'there's something wrong with me, doctor', say there's something right with me — I'm…
- Doctor, there's something right with me — I'm sick — He teaches that sickness is normal; students then walk into Perth surgeries saying 'Doctor,…
- Dog poo under the mango tree — Simile: walking home from the temple you tread in dog poo. Don't scrape it off; take it home and…
- 'Dogs don't have money' — Near the US base by Ubon, around the end of the Vietnam War, an African-American soldier rides a…
- Don't hold back a spooked buffalo — In 1970s Thai villages the water buffalo were docile family members — until spooked: head up,…
- Don't revise the day before — He tells students not to study in the 24 hours before an exam — go for a walk, eat your favourite…
- Don't walk the ant path twice — Analogy: barefoot on Thai jungle paths you learn which trails the ants own — leave those…
- “Don't you ever take away my suffering” — At a grief and loss seminar at Observation City, Ajahn Brahm teaches his 'concert' way of letting…
- “Donald, duck!” — An assassin pulls a gun on Donald Trump; the Secret Service shout “Donald, duck!” — and the gunman…
- Dr Yi Fa the 'Hinayana' — In Bangkok Ajahn Brahm banters with Mahayana nun Dr Yi Fa (Fo Guang Shan, San Diego): when will…
- Drawn out of catatonia by kindness (a dream) — As a young monk Ajahn Brahm dreams vividly of being tortured and retreating into a deep catatonic…
- Dress code: long dress — Ajahn Brahm is invited to a state dinner with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip at Parliament…
- Drowned in his own teepee — A Native American migrates to Perth and loves Sri Lankan tea so much that one day he drinks too…
- Drunken karaoke on Christmas night in Penang — Teaching a retreat in Penang, Ajahn Brahm is kept awake on Christmas night by a karaoke party…
- Dying peacefully like Dad (the bus-driver joke) — A comedian wants to die peacefully in his sleep like his father — unlike the screaming passengers…
E
- Easier for rich Buddhists — At a talk to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in WA, a wealthy business audience asks about Jesus'…
- Economy class was paradise — After seven years in austere forest monasteries he flies Bangkok–London on a cheap Philippine…
- Edgar Cayce and the medicine on the third shelf — Edgar Cayce, a devout Christian medium in 1930s America, would diagnose and prescribe in trance.…
- Engine running in Northbridge — On a day out on business, a driver takes Ajahn Brahm to a Northbridge shop for 'the best pies in…
- Enlightenment by teatime — At his first Vesak, with the Cambridge University Buddhist group, 18-year-old Brahm hears how the…
- Even the monk got excited at the auction — Bidding for land for the nuns' monastery, Ajahn Brahm watches the auctioneer move from a calm…
- Everyone has invisible spikes — Analogy: everyone grows invisible spikes. Some people enter a room and scratch everyone; most have…
- Exams kill by degrees — Cambridge graffiti outside the Cavendish Physics lab: 'Exams kill by degrees' — study aimed at the…
- Eye shade for a stranger at Changi — At Changi Airport a Western woman could not sleep on a busy bench after an overnight flight. Ajahn…
- Eye shades for a stranger at Changi — Between flights at Changi he gives airline eye shades to an exhausted Western woman he does not…
F
- Face to face with a tiger — in the zoo — Asked about jungle stories, Ajahn Brahm says he once stood four feet from a huge tiger and was not…
- Fall in the same hole three times — Analogy: walk down a street, fall in a muddy hole twice with shame, third time walk around it —…
- Falling off a Scottish cliff, his life flashed by — At 19, walking alone in Scotland with a heavy pack, he stepped off an eroded sheep track and fell…
- Families around the toothpaste-tube lamp — In his first weeks in a poor Northeast Thai village — no electricity, dirt roads, no TV — Ajahn…
- Fat bottoms polish the temple floors — Joke about why temple floors in Asia and at Serpentine's Dhamma hall shine: centuries of people…
- Father and son who couldn't remember why — Blessing a house in Brisbane, Ajahn Brahm learns the father and his eldest son haven't spoken or…
- “Fear killed twenty thousand” — Plague demons meet in a forest clearing to compare tolls: one killed 1,000 in Paris, another 2,000…
- Feeding the mosquitoes — Bitten all night in an Indonesian hotel room, Ajahn Brahm reframes the mosquitoes as recipients of…
- Fifteen minutes of goodbyes from a brain-tumour coma — As reported (Ajahn Brahm recalls) in a Time magazine issue on the mind, a US patient with an…
- Fifty strokes of the cat — A new postulant confesses to secretly making an afternoon sandwich and, refusing Ajahn Brahm's…
- First a flag on the summit, then a coffee shop — On mountain summits people leave flags, cairns and carved names (he jokes about carving 'Peter…
- First five-minute meditation, 1969 — In 1969 — about fifty-five years before this talk — Ajahn Brahm sits for his first meditation,…
- First night at Bodhinyana, under a tree — On his first night at the Serpentine land that became Bodhinyana, Ajahn Brahm's bed was an old…
- First TV after seven years — After about seven years as a monk in Thailand, visiting Scotland, he sees a TV through two…
- First walk up Kingsbury Drive — Building Bodhinyana, Brahm sends the car ahead and walks Kingsbury Drive alone for the first time…
- Five Angels in the fifth race — A Perth man dreams that five angels each give him five pots of gold. At breakfast his wife has…
- Five fingers arguing who is most important — Fable: five fingers argue supremacy — mirror of egos asking who matters most in the Buddhist…