Stories about beauty
7 Buddhist wisdom stories about beauty from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Cambridge Botanical Gardens — first bamboo clumpStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Student days near Baitman Street, Cambridge: first day in the Botanical Gardens he finds a bamboo clump so beautiful he stares 10–15 minutes, invents 'sensuous, soft and slender,…
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Cambridge Botanical Gardens. It was only about 5 minutes walk from where we had our retreat center. And do you know, I don't remember my girlfriend's name. I remember the place where we had our retreat in Baitman Street in Cambridge. My memory of those times was so powerful. Still is. If you really enjoy something, it becomes easy to remember. So just down the road from Baitman Street in Cambridge, we had the botanical gardens and I went in there the first day and just when you went through the entrance [snorts] on the right hand side there was this clump of bamboo and I couldn't believe it. That was the most beautiful clump of bamboo that I've ever seen in my life. I'm not exaggerating. And I kind of thought that isn't that what happens? Bamboo is such a beautiful plant. It's in most of the Chinese water colors you see in museums throughout the world. They always have a clump of bamboo there. If you look at the bamboo stems, they're slender and they have the little joints, the color changes and then the next stem and it gets thinner and thinner and as it does, it bends under its own weight as it curves through space and then you have its branches and leaves which are also very slender. And I'd always say from that time, please excuse me, I'm a monk. Sensuous, soft and slender, coming to a point. And I looked at that first clump of bamboo and it was incredibly beautiful. That I remember very easily. So much so that I just stared at it for about 10 or 15 minutes. When you see something which shocks you, which is really beautiful, you do end up just staring. But I had enough introspection to realize in those days, I think it was 1970, many students took drugs. I never did, but I thought if somebody sees me, [snorts] they call the police, have me arrested or tested or something and disturb my solitude. In those days I had hair and I tell people the hairstyle which I had was such a big curly hair on the outside. Very different than what I've got now. And that went all around the top of my head and where it finished that's where the beard started. Very thick beard. It was very useful to endure the cold. And when people asked what was it, it was like the donut look. You could see my face in the middle and around the outside was all hair. That kind of describes it. And so if someone had seen me and semi staring, you know, entranced by a clump of bamboo, they would have thought the wrong things. So what I did, I just there was a bench close by and just sat on that bench and stared at the clump of bamboo for as long as I could
- Dewdrop on the green hills nimittaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In early nimitta scenery — rolling green hills, trees, a valley river — Ajahn Brahm notices a dewdrop sparkling on a leaf-tip in the sunshine and intuitively zooms attention onto…
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I remember once uh seeing a scenery in the first stage of these nitas breath was very peaceful very joyful then disappeared and saw this beautiful scenery Rolling Green Hills nice trees a little river in the valley all very delightful but to take it further I did notice on on one of the trees on the tip of one of the leaves there was a Jew drop which was sparkling in the sunshine and uh intuitively I knew that's where I had to put my attention and so you just focus in like zooming in on Google
- “It's a bit OTT, isn't it?”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Dragged along to the Taj Mahal on an India pilgrimage, Ajahn Brahm sits at a distance wondering why it's beautiful — only because we're told so? A fellow pilgrim, the late member…
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we went on pilgrimage to india and part of the pilgrimage was actually going to the taj mahal i don't know why we went there but said people wanted to see it so i was dragged along i remember sitting at a distance from the taj mahal in agua in india and just asking myself why is this beautiful it's only beautiful because you're told it's beautiful when i actually look at it from a distance so what's beautiful about this it's a bit of an exaggeration and it almost ruined many many people suffered because of building that but people said it was a work of art what's a work of art is it really beautiful so i was questioning myself there i remember pauline coming up to me and said it's a bit ott isn't it and i said yeah well done c2 was challenging her perceptions were taught to say this is beautiful and when you actually look at it challenge your perceptions it wasn't that beautiful
- Parents who argued, then made upStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a tiny London flat Ajahn Brahm watched his parents argue until they would not speak for an hour or two, then make up in front of the children. Seeing both the quarrel and the…
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living in a very very very small apartment with my mother my father my brother I remember always say my mother and father arguing arguing and sometimes they'd argue so much they wouldn't speak to each other for about an hour or two and then afterwards they'd make up I saw that as a little kid so straight away I learned my expectations of mother and father being perfect are just ridiculous my expectations that a mother and a father would love each other 24 hours a day sort of three six five days a year it's just a stupid but what I did see that yeah arguments happen and they're beautiful especially when you see them making up it's as if the arguing was worth it to see the just the tenderness and the Beautiful forgiveness of two people who would speak to each other for a couple of hours coming together and reconciling and making up that was really Beauty
- The most beautiful bamboo looked sick after the rideStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a UK meditation retreat he bikes through stressful traffic to revisit his favourite bamboo clump — days earlier the most beautiful in the world; now dry, desiccated, out of…
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my beautiful clump of bamboo - I just stared at it - it was gorgeous. I didn't move. The delight, because my hindrances were so suppressed I could just look at something and see it's deep beauty, gave rise to the stillness. The ability just to hold the perception, not really hold it, the perception held me, and just be there, enjoying every moment of this, that's where the restlessness disappears
- The TV star he didn't recogniseStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Teaching a small meditation class in Double Bay, Sydney, Ajahn Brahm notices a woman at the back smiling at him and wonders who on earth she is. Afterwards he learns she was a…
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Now one story. I should actually find out who this lady was, but she was some TV star. I think she was in Water Rats, or something. I don't know her name. Somebody told me, she is really really famous. If I told you her name now I think you would all know her. But I went to teach, it was just an afternoon meditation session in Sydney. This fellow had a little group in Darling Point, like a really top, affluent place of Sydney. So he's in this little group. There are about sort-of 20-30 people. I was talking about meditation. And this lady kept on looking at me and smiling. I didn't know, she was acting very strange. Not like an ordinary girl. [Laughter]. And, in the end, I just took it in my stride and taught the meditation etc., and afterwards I mentioned to the person organizing this and said, "That lady was acting really strange." And he told me that that was a famous TV actress. I figured out she was looking at me strangely because I didn't recognize her. What she was actually saying is, "See, it's me; I am the famous TV star." [laughter] Ajahn Brahm: And I didn't know. [laughter]
- Walking up the hill instead of drivingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After nine years of only driving up to Bodhinyana, Ajahn Brahm gets out at the foot of the hill and walks; the familiar hillside becomes unrecognisably detailed and colourful,…
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I noticed the experience of walking up the hill to Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine. Now, many of you have been down there, hopefully some of you will come down on Sunday for our Katina Ceremony. We bought that 25 years ago, 26, I think now, and for about nine years, I'd gone up, and down, the road to the monastery, always in a car, in some sort of vehicle. It was like one of those days we had a couple of days ago, just warm spring morning. I remember just coming back from some sort of appointment, and feeling just so positive, so energized, and having plenty of time, I told the driver, "Drop me off at the foot of the hill, I'm going to walk up today." Not for exercise so much, just for enjoying the morning, I had plenty of time. So, I started walking from the southwest highway, up Kingsbury Drive, to the gate of Bodhinyana Monastery. As I started walking I got very surprised. Actually, it was a shock. As I looked around me, I could not recognize where I was. That hillside looked totally different from what I remembered seeing looking through the window of a car. It was totally different. I was seeing things which I never knew were there. What I saw had more detail, had more depth of colour. It was just basically more beautiful. Of course that surprised me, and not being in any rush, not being in a hurry, I just stood still. And as I stood still, the whole hillside changed again. It was like evolving. As a monk you're not on any sort of psychotropic substances, you don't take alcohol, although, during our rains retreat, somebody offered the monks some chocolate cake, and, fortunately, before we ate it, one of the monks looked at the little writing on the cover, saying it had alcohol in it! Fortunately, we stopped in time, because sometimes you're not sure when you get some chocolate cake sometimes they put the alcohol in there just for the taste and then they cook it and all the alcohol goes, it doesn't matter. But we didn't know whether it was put in before or afterwards, and so we decided not to take it. We gave it to one of our visitors who was very happy to be a guinea pig [laughter], Like a food taster. And when he came back the next week he said "That was a lot of alcohol." [laughter] It hadn't evaporated, it was a very good job we were very careful. Otherwise, we may have gone to our monastery just after lunch in a rains retreat and seeing all the monks singing and dancing and goodness knows what else. [laughter] Which would not have done very much for our reputation, so you've got to be very careful. So we don't take such things. We are sort of sober, mindful, alert. So here I was having an experience, like sometimes you have in life, when things become really weird and they start changing in front of your eyes. But what had happened was, what I was seeing, it had more detail, more information. That hillside, you started to see little flowers, started to see rocks, and just the shape of the rocks and the lichen on the rocks. And, just look at the tree barks, and the whole tree bark was just amazing, beautiful. What was also strange was that the colours, the colours of everything you saw, started to grow more intense, more rich, more deep and more beautiful. The whole thing was exquisite. Of course, when a monk has experiences like that, we don't just enjoy, we sort-of contemplate afterwards what the heck was going on. And I decided to analyze it through science, and it became quite clear to me that, when you see things, sight is a chemical reaction on the back of your eye, on the retina. What happens with most people is that when they see something, they move on to another image almost immediately. So, the image on the back of your eye doesn't have time to properly form, and the colors don't come out. They're just maybe 10 percent of what's there, and the detail is all smeared, because the image does not have time. When I walked, I was going slower. The images on the back of my eye, the light had more time, so you could see a much more full picture with more detail, and the colours were deeper because they had more time to manifest. It was just a simple physiology of sight which was occurring. And, of course, when I stood absolutely still, only then did my eyes have all the time they needed to form a full picture. And for the colours, which were out there all the time, to be fully represented in the image on the back of my eye. And for my mind to have time to explore it fully, to appreciate it, and to taste it 100 percent.