All stories, A–Z

T

• The frozen forest and the sacred silence — On his first visit home after seven years in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm stays at a new, unheated…
• The gay leader at Mercy Hospital — After a talk at what was then Mercy / St Anne's Hospital by the river, a man in his sixties or…
• The general's holy water — At a time when generals were the power behind the Thai government, a major general comes to Ajahn…
• The gentleman who helped the homeless man in Hampstead — Thai forest monks newly arrived in a grey, drizzly London winter are staying in an old house in…
• The ghost at the end of the cave — On Vesak day at a cave monastery in the north of Thailand, Ajahn Brahm slips away from the abbot's…
• The ghost at the toilet door — After a funeral, a terrified 11-year-old novice stays in the hall all night; at 2 a.m. he dashes…
• The ghost dog who brought back the ring — A woman living alone with her beloved dog loses a sentimental ring in a park and can't find it…
• The ghost that moved next door — Near Dr K. Sri Dhammananda's temple in Kuala Lumpur a haunted house is cleared by his chanting —…
• The ghost who kept playing practical jokes — A Scottish man's mate promises that after death he will still play practical jokes; in the English…
• The ghost who wanted the remote — A Perth family told Ajahn Brahm that while they watched TV the channel kept changing by itself;…
• The girl who had been a python — A photo given to him (he thinks) by a Burmese monk, with the story written on the back: a young…
• The glass is already cracked — Ajahn Chah's simile, holding up a glass: it has a microscopic crack — the crack of impermanence.…
• The glasses on top of his nose — Halfway down Kingsbury Drive on the way to a Friday talk, Ajahn Brahm tells his driver to turn…
• The governor who ended witchcraft accusations — A woman accused of witchcraft faces burning; a smart colonial governor (Pennsylvania framing as…
• The Grax gravy monk who levitated — Old Aussie TV gravy ad: line of Theravāda-looking monks; abbot (dead ringer for Ajahn Jagaro)…
• The great physicist standing alone at dinner — When Roger Penrose visits Perth, Ajahn Brahm and the Society's president join a dinner with NASA…
• The grumpy licence — On a meditation retreat a woman complains that everyone else is happy and she feels pressured to…
• The guard who fell asleep — Teaching meditation in a high-security prison at Canning Vale, Ajahn Brahm must have a prison…
• The gypsy's curse — Visiting his mother in London, Ajahn Brahm answers the door at mealtime to a woman selling 'lucky'…
• The haematologist who made room for kindness — The year after Ajahn Brahm received a Curtin University medal, he attended the award for Professor…
• The half sheet of paper — At an old man's funeral his widow holds up half a sheet of paper he kept in his wallet all his…
• The half-million-dollar bulletproof amulet — From a Thai newspaper: an army general in Bangkok paid half a million US dollars for an amulet…
• The Happiness Certificate — For people who feel they don't deserve happiness he makes a certificate on monastery letterhead:…
• The happiness licence — Some years ago a person whose life was going well came to Ajahn Brahm feeling guilty about being…
• The head on the morgue windowsill — Because a Buddhist monk is not stopped in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm was able to walk into the autopsy…
• The hearse in the carpool lane — Stopped by police for driving a hearse alone in a two-or-more lane in New York or San Francisco, a…
• The heart that remembered the murder — Girl ~10–11 gets heart transplant; recurrent nightmare of being attacked and killed. Mother traces…
• The heart-attack role play — Teaching hospital nurses and doctors in Hong Kong, Ajahn Brahm pairs them. At the bell, A pretends…
• The heretics' pew — Ajahn Brahm, Abbot Placid of New Norcia, and a Uniting Church moderator sit together at St…
• The hermit of the Nullarbor — Ajahn Brahm's monk's fantasy: living as a hermit in a deep Nullarbor cave with water beneath. Then…
• The hole is too deep — or your arms too short? — Man can't reach forest-hole treasure; complains the hole is too deep. Second man uses a stick:…
• The homeless man put his sandwich in the bowl — During a Perth conference a young monk skipped the free lunch to walk St Georges Terrace with his…
• The honey and the milk — In parallel supermarket checkout aisles, at almost the same moment, one child drops a jar of honey…
• The hundred-baht wish list — A grateful Thai supporter who knows the rules offers the young monk a 'mendicant allowance' of 100…
• The husband's photo in her handbag — Married 30 or 40 years, a woman always carries her husband's photo in her handbag. Whenever life…
• The hypnotist monk's donation box — A new monk can't pay his temple's bills. A senior monk advises: close the doors, turn up the heat,…
• The ICU patient everyone had given up on — Ajahn Brahm is called to chant for a woman in ICU at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital with severe flu…
• The intern's pager and the one-or-two-second listen — A distraught intern told Ajahn Brahm he had resuscitated a cardiac-arrest patient a few seconds…
• The irresistible tobacco — At Cambridge, a TV advert claims the aroma of St Bruno pipe tobacco is irresistible to women: an…
• The Japanese monk who just started walking — A Japanese fellow-monk of Ajahn Chah flew to Tokyo to visit family in the north without telling…
• The jarrah boat coffin that stuck halfway — A white-water rafter's family make his coffin as a boat with paddles — out of jarrah, so heavy ten…
• The jealous husband's astral visits — A Burmese man working on air-conditioning contracts in Darwin, deeply in love with — and very…
• The jewelled goblet: his last drink — At an Emmanuel College scholars' dinner in Cambridge, after much port and claret, the students…
• The Jimi Hendrix museum was shut — Jimi Hendrix was Ajahn Brahm's teenage idol; he even had the haircut. Giving talks in Seattle with…
• The kids throwing stones on Bunbury beach — In the early years in Australia, while Ajahn Brahm meditates on Bunbury beach, stones start…
• The king eagle in the mountains — Young spiritual searcher in cold mountains sees a vast eagle (king eagle) after spotting a…
• The king's elephant and the thieves — A king's fine elephant turns wilful and troublesome, and no trainer can fix it. A wise minister…
• The kung fu pose — Walking from his mother's flat in Acton to give a talk at the Sri Lankan temple, Ajahn Brahm takes…
• The ladder taken away — Pre-Vietnam-War Laos monastery: abbot marches exhausted monks all day to huge old trees with…
• The last animal I killed — a warm mouse — Age 16, just after father dies: traps and kills a mouse for terrified mother. Decades later still…
• The lawyer who tried to take it with him — A dying rich lawyer, sure he can find a loophole, has his wife stash suitcases of cash in the…
• The leaf moves only because of the wind — Simile (from Ajahn Chah, as he tells it): Ajahn Chah would hold up his hand and wave it — not at…
• The leper's smile was bigger than anyone's in Perth — On a Ganges tour, walking back to the tourist bus through a leper colony, Ajahn Brahm is…
• The letter that wouldn't come — Tired one morning, Ajahn Brahm struggles at the computer over a very difficult letter about a…
• The live eel in the birthday box — Growing up in Acton, West London, when jellied eels and mash were a craze, eight-year-old Peter…
• The locust plague that never came — Years ago The West Australian reports a locust plague advancing on Perth: twenty kilometres closer…
• The log that was a crocodile — A Sri Lankan man fed the fish in a lagoon with a slice of bread every morning on his way to work,…
• The lottery shop he blessed — Asked to bless a friend-of-a-friend's new small business, a busy Ajahn Brahm gives it his full…
• The lottery winner led to jail — A happy man of modest means wins a US lottery of over a hundred million dollars; soon his picture…
• The lottery winners who couldn't find their kids — A UK couple win about £40 million and buy a huge dream mansion — then sell it a year later,…
• The magistrate who spent weeks in jail — As someone told Ajahn Brahm (details half-remembered), an Australian magistrate spent three or…
• The man in constant 'saw-cut' pain who was at peace — A man tells Ajahn Brahm that scans at Osborne Park Hospital's pain clinic show his pain equals…
• The man in the latex mask whose psoriasis cleared — At a North Perth / Redemptorist retreat centre near Northbridge a man arrived in a latex face mask…
• The man paid to irritate everyone — From an early book on spirituality: in Gurdjieff's community in France one man was a pain in the…
• The man sentenced for having a cold — Ajahn Brahm recalls Samuel Butler's satire Erewhon, read as a student: a society where what we…
• The man who attended his own funeral — A terminally ill man in the United States decides to hold his funeral service a week or two before…
• The man who cried for the moon — A father weeps every evening at his son's cremation ground; his family hires an actor who weeps…
• The man who shouted at the traffic lights — On a hot day on Leach Highway, Ajahn Brahm sits in the passenger seat with the window open. A foot…
• The man who walked straight past the judge — From a German book a German-born monk translated aloud: a seven- or eight-year-old boy has a…
• The man who wouldn't drop his hemp — Two men go to an abandoned region to scavenge. Both bundle up hemp. Finding hemp cloth, one throws…
• The man whose thoughts ran away — As a monk of one or two years in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm watches a man who comes to the monastery…
• The man with four wives — A dying man asks each of his four wives to come with him into death. The beautiful fourth wife,…
• The mango tree with no mangoes — A king sees two mango trees — one laden, one bare — and almost curses the bare one. Returning for…
• The mangy dog who tried to run away — A dog with mange suffers terrible itching and blames the village, so runs off to the forest —…
• The matchbox on the head — A malnourished young monk in steamy north-east Thailand — sticky rice with a boiled frog, under…
• The maths graduate with almost no brain — Ajahn Brahm retells Professor John Lorber's case of a Sheffield University mathematics honours…
• The meditator taken to hospital as dead — A member of the Perth community meditates so deeply at home that his wife finds no signs of life;…
• The meditator twisted into a knot — On a retreat someone interrupts his meditation: a woman is twisted into an extreme, contorted…
• The medium who named Auntie Opal's husband — Just after WWII, Ajahn Brahm's mother and his aunt Opal, close as sisters, visit a medium for fun.…
• The medium, then Donald asked her to dance — His auntie (cousin to his mum, still alive at 96–97) visited a medium with his mother before a…
• The meteor's last blaze — Simile for enlightenment: you're a meteor circling the solar system round and round, millions of…
• The Mexican fisherman — An American business professor on holiday meets a Mexican fisherman unloading his morning catch:…
• The millionaire who retired to Guadalcanal — A man who made his fortune in the Roaring Twenties and cashed out before the Depression researches…
• The miner who thanked the man who cost him his legs — In early WA mining, a worker about to set explosives has nowhere to hide when a brakeless iron…
• The minister who never stopped talking — A king cannot get any business done because one minister talks on and on in every session. Walking…
• The minister who read their minds — Long ago a Thai minister is so wise that the king always prefers his advice, and the other…
• The monastery monkey and the cheeky visitor — Supporter frees a market-caged monkey into a forest monastery; it joins afternoon tea. Grateful to…
• The monastery monkey reborn as a boy — A Thai Buddhist buys an abused monkey at a market and gives it to a forest monastery in Thailand.…
• The monk drunk at the town gate — In the Buddha's time, generous but unwise lay people ask some scallywag monks what monks need;…
• The monk in the front seat of the bus — Thais believe a monk's good karma protects those behind him, so monks are seated at the front of…
• The monk nominated president of the progress association — The monk at the Albany temple, who makes an effort to connect with locals, joined the Elleker…
• The monk they cremated — From the suttas: villagers find a monk meditating in the forest so still he doesn't seem to…
• The monk who built a women's prison — A famous Thai monk, already housed, spent surplus donations on schools and hospitals — and, after…
• The monk who fixed NASA's computer — NASA in Houston can't get a new multi-million-dollar supercomputer to work; experts flown in first…
• The monk who gave a kidney to the evangelical — A Sri Lankan monk who regularly gave blood was asked to donate a kidney to a perfect match — an…
• The monk who gave the IT keynote — Though he says he knows little about computers, Ajahn Brahm accepts an invitation to give the…
• The monk who grabbed the king cobra — Other monks Ajahn Brahm grew up with saw a king cobra wander into the hall; a monk who had been a…
• The monk who laughed at his cancer diagnosis — Dr K. Sri Dhammananda, the 'chief priest of Malaysia' and author of 'How to Live Without Fear and…
• The monk who ordained seven times — In the Buddha's time a man becomes a monk but misses his wife, so he disrobes; as soon as he gets…
• The monk who pulled his own tooth — Rather than travel to a dentist, a Bodhinyana monk pulls his own tooth with workshop pliers; he…