Stories about competition
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about competition from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Can I play for the other side?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his last ever soccer match, for his Cambridge college, the other team turns up with only nine players against eleven. By half-time his side is about six-nil up, so he asks his…
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The last soccer match I ever played this is absolutely true for the college you know which I went to in Cambridge if you know soccer it's 11 aside only nine of their team turned up and we were 11 so we had two more players than they did and at halfime after 45 minutes we were about 6n up it was such a onesided game that I went to my captain and said, "Can I play on the other side for the second half to make a game of it?" He swore at me. He said, "No, we're here to win." And that just I wasn't going to play anymore because for me it was like playing for fun. It didn't matter who won.
- I finally realised I didn't need to winStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A British schoolboy champion long-distance runner never loses — until one day he does. Asked why: he realised he didn't need to win. He never won another race, and was happier.
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one of his best friends was one of these athletes. He was like a long distance runner. And he would win every competition. And of first of all, the school competition, and then the sort of the county competition, and then the country competition. He was the champion long distance runner for the British schoolboys. And he would never lose a race. And then one day, inexplicably, he lost. And my friend who was a monk just went up to him and said, "How come you lost this time? What went wrong?" And this champion who people were thinking going to sort of go and represent sort of that country in the Olympic Games, he was doing that well. He said, "I finally realized I didn't need to win." And that was just an amazing statement because he had forced himself, he had tortured himself
- Why the German worked harder in AustraliaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A society member who migrated from West Germany before reunification is told by Australian workmates that Germans have a strong economy because they work hard. No, he says — he…
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many years ago when I first came there's one of the members he just migrated from West Germany this was before unification at that time I think the West German economy was the best in the world beating Japan China United states there's a very very strong economy and he told me that when he when he came and worked here in Western Australia his work friends sort of said to him oh you Germans you got such a good economy because you really know how to work hard no that's not right I work much harder here in Australia than I ever worked in Germany and I asked him well why was your economy so strong he said because when I was working in Germany family. This was before unification. He said we would work cooperatively here in Australia. He said we work like this competing against each other in the same office in the same company. He said that was why we had to work so hard to be competitive to be productive. Sorry when you work together you have cooperation instead of competition you get far more success far more productivity and also you don't have this jealousy business