Stories about acceptance
47 Buddhist wisdom stories about acceptance from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ajahn Chah sits in the centre of the feverStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Malaria was an occupational hazard for jungle monks, and Ajahn Chah suffered it for years. During one intense attack, instead of lying in bed worrying, he sat up and meditated…
- Ajahn Liem: easy to trainStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Abbots in the Thai forest tradition greet each other: “How are your monks — are they easy to train?” Visiting Ajahn Liem, Ajahn Chah's successor, Ajahn Brahm asks, and Ajahn Liem…
- Ajahn MosquitoStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a young monk, Ajahn Brahm finds the mosquitoes intolerable and asks for repellent, coils and screens — surely the monastery can afford them. Ajahn Chah says no: from now on…
- All his questions vanished before Ajahn TateStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Tate, a famous monk once sent home from hospital to die of cancer (he lived another 25 years), is so revered that young Ajahn Brahm waits two days for an appointment, full…
- Barefoot in the Korean snowStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After the Pope's visit to South Korea, Korean Buddhists organised a World Meditation Masters gathering, planning seven famous monks (only four came). At the end of February, on…
- Dad walks into the spud-gun battleStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Aged about 12, Ajahn Brahm brings friends home after school for a spud-gun war, chairs upside down, the flat wrecked. His father arrives unexpectedly; terrified of being told off…
- Doctor, there's something right with me — I'm sickStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He teaches that sickness is normal; students then walk into Perth surgeries saying 'Doctor, there's something right with me — I'm sick' — doctors recognise Namara/Buddhist…
- Drowned in his own teepeeJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Native American migrates to Perth and loves Sri Lankan tea so much that one day he drinks too much and drowns in his own tea-pee.
- Hägar: 'Why me?' — 'Why not!'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a Hägar the Horrible cartoon, Hägar is shipwrecked on an island in a storm. He looks up at the sky: 'God! Why me?' And God roars back: 'Why not!'
- “I never argued with anyone”Joke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A fit 90-year-old says the secret of his long life is that he never argued with anyone. “That can't be right,” says the interviewer. “Ah… I agree with you.”
- “In the building trade we call it a feature”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After Ajahn Brahm tells the two-bad-bricks story at the Cancer Support Association, a builder reassures him professionals make the same mistakes — and shares the trade secret:…
- 'Joy at last to know there's no happiness in the world'Analogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A favourite image of Ajahn Chah's, which he used when visiting England about 25 years earlier: a statue in a monastery in southern Thailand of a fully enlightened monk throwing…
- Meeting the monk who could read mindsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a very young monk Ajahn Brahm is afraid to meet a reputed mind-reader in case his thoughts are exposed. When he finally goes, he feels so completely accepted and loved —…
- My soulmate is out there somewhereStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A woman around sixty kept coming to say she knew her soulmate was waiting somewhere; he kept saying he isn't — she insisted she just hadn't found him yet. He calls the visits a…
- No electricity on the big dayStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On the morning of the ceremony starting the rains retreat at Bodhinyana — the monastery's second-biggest day, with many guests coming — Ajahn Brahm comes out of meditation at…
- 'Nothing wrong with being crazy'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At Cambridge in the 1970s a friend who had taken LSD came up to Ajahn Brahm saying, 'I think I'm going crazy.' Ajahn Brahm told him, 'Well, nothing wrong with being crazy — just…
- Nudge the bushfireAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From the 1991 crown fire at Serpentine he learned you can't control a bushfire by facing it head-on and saying stop. You nudge it this way and that — a bit of back-burning, a…
- Paṭācārā, who lost everythingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Paṭācārā, from a good family, runs away with her low-born lover. Pregnant, she tries to return to her parents to give birth but delivers on the way; the second time too. Her…
- Rubbing the monk's bellyStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Around Chinese New Year, standing by the reception door of the Perth centre, Ajahn Brahm is approached by an elderly Chinese woman who takes one look at the fat-tummied monk and…
- Seeing his monastery through a visitor's eyesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: When Ajahn Jagaro disrobes, Ajahn Brahm is left running Bodhinyana: building and abbot's work all week, teaching in Perth all weekend. He even grows jealous of relaxed visitors.…
- 'She's in denial'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Thai woman, a great early supporter of the monastery, calls him to hospital: what she thought was hay fever is inoperable lung cancer, perhaps two weeks to live. He finds her…
- Strawberry ice cream on spaghetti bologneseStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Monks eat everything from one bowl. Once, the person serving Ajahn Brahm tipped strawberry ice cream straight on top of his spaghetti bolognese. Why think it's nasty? — though,…
- Sunsets need cloudsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile from the hills at Serpentine: the best sunsets come when there's cloud or dust in the sky; the imperfections spread the light into crimsons and gold. Without them the…
- “Thank you for the car park”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After lunch at Bodhinyana a stranger turns out to be the Serpentine-Jarrahdale Shire building surveyor who signed off all the monastery's plans. On his last day before retiring…
- The 18-hour flight delayStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm's flight to Indonesia is delayed 18 hours; he thanks the desk and goes back to the monastery, while the passengers behind him thump the counter — which does not make…
- The cats and the building sandStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Bodhinyana is covered in gravel, so the monastery's cats treat any pile of sand as a luxury loo, burying their business in it. The day before this talk, mixing mortar, Ajahn…
- The crooked trees are the beautiful onesAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a mental-health conference a woman apologises to Ajahn Brahm: when he walked in she thought “who is this wanker?” — but his talk made her laugh and cry. What made her cry was…
- The ghost at the end of the caveStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On Vesak day at a cave monastery in the north of Thailand, Ajahn Brahm slips away from the abbot's dull talk and is asked by villager after villager the same questions: how many…
- The ghost who wanted the remoteStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Perth family told Ajahn Brahm that while they watched TV the channel kept changing by itself; each time they changed it back, it changed again. They concluded a ghost in the…
- The heart-attack role playStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Teaching hospital nurses and doctors in Hong Kong, Ajahn Brahm pairs them. At the bell, A pretends to have a heart attack and B responds as usual — “Keep your eyes open, stay…
- The man in constant 'saw-cut' pain who was at peaceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A man tells Ajahn Brahm that scans at Osborne Park Hospital's pain clinic show his pain equals having an arm sawn off with a two-handed saw — 24 hours a day. Yet Ajahn Brahm…
- The man who cried for the moonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A father weeps every evening at his son's cremation ground; his family hires an actor who weeps louder, 'for the moon'. When the father calls him crazy, the actor answers that at…
- The man who shouted at the traffic lightsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a hot day on Leach Highway, Ajahn Brahm sits in the passenger seat with the window open. A foot away, the driver in the next lane, caught at the red light, rages at it: “You…
- The number-two monk who had to become abbotStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm planned to stay number two behind Ajahn Jagaro — 'the car at the front of the convoy gets all the bugs on the windscreen' — until the head monk fell in love and left,…
- The one-shoe thiefStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: For weeks, people at the Friday-night talks kept losing shoes — but only ever one of a pair. Was it a one-legged thief? Then the owner of the dog next door looked in its kennel…
- The paralysed man who forgave his surgeonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As reported in a Singapore newspaper article someone sent him: during spinal surgery a surgeon drops an instrument on a man's spine and paralyses him. Instead of suing, he says,…
- The patient who took off her oxygen maskStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A doctor tells Ajahn Brahm about a patient with severe anxiety who was on an oxygen mask after every treatment had been tried — except his. She taught the patient his approach:…
- The perfect Zen gardenStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A young Japanese gardening monk makes the most admired garden in Japan. An old meditation monk climbs in early one morning and hides to learn his secret. The gardener meditates,…
- The pickaxe mum whose son won Iron ChefStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An early Bodhinyana disciple helped smash rock for the ablution-block plumbing with a pickaxe, raised four kids who did poorly at school but brilliantly in life — one became head…
- The two arrowsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: The Buddha's simile: when you suffer, it is as if two arrows strike you — the physical arrow and the mental arrow. The physical arrow (sickness, losing your job, criticism,…
- “There is no problem in the Middle East”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Asked during the Six-Day War about 'the problem in the Middle East', a British Prime Minister (Ajahn Brahm says Harold Macmillan) replies there is no problem: “a problem is…
- They drew a circle that shut me outAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Poem/analogy: heretic shut out by a circle; love and wisdom draw a bigger circle that includes them in — visual for mettā expanding the in-group.
- “This is my son, the monk”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On his first visit home after seven years as a monk, when monks in London were seen as weirdos, Ajahn Brahm asks to join his mother on her Saturday shopping, expecting her to be…
- 'Trespassers will be converted'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: To keep wanderers out of the quiet Jhana Grove retreat centre, the society knew 'Trespassers will be prosecuted' never works, because people aren't afraid. So they put up…
- Why did I get shot?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A man drafted into the Thai army, wounded in a border skirmish, comes to Ajahn Chah asking what bad karma caused it — did he kill someone in a past life, mistreat his parents?…
- “Why don't you come and stay with us?” — the monk in Casuarina PrisonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A monk teaching at a high-security prison describes monastery life (4 am rising, one meal, hard work, no TV, sleeping on the floor); horrified, a prisoner invites him to come and…
- 'You never talked to us about your Buddhism'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm kept his non-Buddhist friends from Cambridge, and saw some at a reunion after 40 years. At the end of college he had asked them what they thought of his being a…