Stories about character
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about character from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Darlington: the church or the gasworks?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On his first visit to England as a monk (seven or eight years ordained), touring northern groups with the abbot, he visits the run-down town of Darlington. On a morning walk they…
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I remember an experience when I went to visit England for the very first time after I became a monk about seven or eight years as a monk and we had a monastery over there which was just building up up and so the the Abbot over there Su took me off with him to a tour of the north of England in Scotland was visiting some more remote some more remote Buddhist groups and we went to this C mining town of of Darlington we went there on a weekend for a retreat and the first thing which the locals told us it's very rare for someone to visit that that rundown City on a weekend most people get out on the weekend and go somewhere else so we went to that town and then we went for a walk in the morning after breakfast we went to the gardens and we found a beautiful little church to go and have a look inside and when we went back our host said where did you go to a walk for a walk we told him said you went to the most beautiful parts of town that's very indicative of your characters because there was a monkey of a few months before and when he went for a walk he went down to the Gas Works and the rundown old canal in the industrial area and we laugh and said yeah that's his character he a very negative monk
- The king's elephant and the thievesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A king's fine elephant turns wilful and troublesome, and no trainer can fix it. A wise minister camps by its stall and discovers that thieves meet behind it every night to plan…
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there an old story from the Buddhist U Canon about this elephant you know in those days people didn't have BMWs or Porsches they had elephants and this was a king so this was know really a high class elephant now the Kings don't have any rubbish for their vehicles and that's actually how you get places on elephants so this King had a really nice elephant you know probably bought it from a very good dealer you know with all the extras and uh so he brought a very expensive elephant it was fine for a while but after sort of a few years in the garage it started to develop problems they tried to get it serviced but you know even the elephant trainers they couldn't fix up the problem the elephant was just not behaving and not doing I was being very willful and negative and causing all sorts of problems so the king wanted to get rid of that elephant but there was a wise minister was a wise minister in these Buddhist stories it's a shame we don't have wise ministers in our state government in our in our other governments maybe they have but anyway this was a very wise minister in our old King's government and the wise men said just leave it with me for a while this is really strange how come this elephant changed character so the wise Minister he just camped out next to the elephant stall overnight just to see what was going on and he found out with his camp there he heard a noise late at night he investigated that was a meeting place behind the elephant store of a group of Thieves who had meet there late at night and planned their robberies later on that evening and because of the way they spoke was so negative that was actually influencing the elephant even though the elephant couldn't understand human language the elephant could still get what we call the Vibes the energy of these bad people and obviously that had been going on so long after so many nights so the minister understood what had changed the elephant's character so the following day he told the king they had those SE arrested but that wasn't enough they had to change the character in another way so the king invited the monks every evening to go and meditate behind the elephant store do a bit of chanting and discuss you know some dummer and the influence of those monks you know every evening for many weeks behind the elephant store and then the elephant became very peaceful and calm just like the monks and that's how they fixed up the want an elephant
- The two mangoesAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile for rebirth: you eat a mango, plant its seed, tend the sapling, and years later the tree gives a new mango. The two are connected by cause and effect, yet share no…
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the best simile which I have manag to concoct is the SYM of the the two mangoes so imagine a mango when you eat it today don't about you but I like mangoes we use many mangoes in simes in Buddhism I don't know why maybe it says something about my cravings and desires but nevertheless imagine a mango and you eat it and enjoy it and you take the seed and you put it in your garden and you water that mango and after a while the mango germinates and a sh comes out and you look after that little sapling and it grow go into a nice tree and eventually the tree flowers and you have another mango now we know that those two mangoes the one you ate years ago and its descendant on the tree from which it grew they are connected there they're connected but it's also totally different from the first mango to the second mango if you compare those two mangoes the one you ate and the the new one from the seed there's probably not even the the same DNA in there there's always mutations you know from from time to time certainly there's no of even molecules which are in the new mango that were there in the old mango so it's a totally different mango but nevertheless you can see a connection a cause and effect process so in other words at any moment in time you can find the link between where say that sapling came from and you know where that sapling is going to and you have this whole chain this connected chain of links from the first mango and the seed inside of it to the new mango and the new tree and this actually this chain of events this cause and effect process is how even the Buddha described this life and also that that incredible time where we go over the horizon from this life into what's beyond into a new life but first of all just working on that simile of the mango you can see if the mango which you ate before was very sweet and juicy it's very likely the new mango will be juicy if the mango you ate was Sour it's very likely the new mango will be sour there has been some tender Tendencies which have gone across from one manga to its descendants and it's that tendency what we call the inclinations this is actually what we always say goes across from life to life the thing in itself there's no connection there's no there's no sameness there but there is this connection this cause and effect process which carries with it the Tendencies the character traits our inclinations which we bu up in this life