Stories about attachment to suffering
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about attachment to suffering from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- “Don't you ever take away my suffering”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a grief and loss seminar at Observation City, Ajahn Brahm teaches his 'concert' way of letting go of grief: his father's 16 years with him were like a beautiful concert — be…
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when I went to a pain and loss conference many years ago, and there was a person, they were very…, her daughter was one of the, the victims of the Claremont killer. Anyway, after I gave her some really nice advice about how to let go of her pains, she came up to me, and she, nose to nose almost, she was so angry, she said, “How dare you try to take away my grief??”
- “Get off my feet”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From Ram Dass's writings: a young disciple invites him to her father, in constant agony in hospital with no drug that works. The 'redneck' father sees the long-haired guru in…
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There was this guru, when I was a young man, called Ram Dass – you know, this long-haired hippies, you know, went to India, taking lots of drugs and thinking that was spiritual awakening, a weirdo, but he did say some wise things as well. And he went to United States, got a few disciples, ‘cause he was from Harvard apparently. He got a few disciples and one of his lady disciples said: ‘Look, my father is really sick, in constant pain in hospital, can you come and visit him, give him some counselling?’. So he said: ‘Yeah I'll go in’. So he went into one of these hospitals in the United States. And her father was like a redneck, you know, typical United States Caucasian redneck. So when he saw this hippie in his robes and beads coming in, he just: ‘What are you doing, get out of here! I'm not gonna listen to you, you freak!’ And so, you know, he wouldn't take any counselling. So his daughter started talking to her father. And apparently Ram Dass, nothing else to do, decided to give this patient a foot massage. You know, just something nice to do. And he's giving a foot massage, and for the first time in days, all the patient's pain disappeared. The pain vanished, it was like a miracle. And this guy said: ‘Get off my feet, you freak!’ He'd rather have the pain and have his whole worldview and philosophy intact, then get the pain away and having to face that there was many things in his life which he didn't understand. And that was a good example of addiction to pain, rather than giving up your views about what life is and what the reality is or what religion is. That was really quite an interesting story.