Stories about adversity
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about adversity from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Dog poo under the mango treeAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile: walking home from the temple you tread in dog poo. Don't scrape it off; take it home and scrape it off under your mango tree. A year later the mangoes are sweeter — and…
Read full story
it is the simile of coming to the temple and when you walk home you tread in a big pile of dog and what do you do with dog when it gets on your shoes number one do not absolutely forbidden in buddhism breaking the precept of wisdom you don't scrape it off your shoes you must always take it home with you and only scrape it off when you get to your garden and scrape it off under the flowers or the apple tree or the mango tree whatever fruit you like that's where you scrape off the dog poo because one year later your mango tree would have so many more mangoes they'll be much sweeter than ever before and whenever you bite into that mango and the juice drips down your cheek you must always remember what you're really eating and it's true you're eating dog that's where it came from but it's all been transformed into anger
- The bat-cave papayaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a young monk Ajahn Brahm spent about six months meditating in a cave full of bats; to this day he loves the smell of bat droppings because it reminds him of those wonderful…
Read full story
This cave where I spent about 6 months when I was uh a young monk to this it had so many bats in it and to this day I love the smell of bat poo. because it reminds me it's association with these wonderful meditations I had in this cave where there's so many bats. Number two, at the front of that cave, just as you come out of the cave, there was a papaya tree and the papayas on that tree were the most delicious papayas I'd ever eaten or ever eaten since. And the reason was because each one of those um u those papayas I ate, they were fertilized by thousands of bats. So I knew what I was eating. It wasn't papaya. It was bat poo. Transformed into the most delicious, sweet, juicy papaya I've ever had in my whole life.