Stories about control
9 Buddhist wisdom stories about control from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ajahn Liem: easy to trainStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Abbots in the Thai forest tradition greet each other: “How are your monks — are they easy to train?” Visiting Ajahn Liem, Ajahn Chah's successor, Ajahn Brahm asks, and Ajahn Liem…
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a few years ago I went to see the man the monk who took over from aan cha a man called aan Liam very good Monk and I asked him one day when I was visiting Thailand I said how are your monks are they easy to train and he said oh they're just no problem at all to train and the way he said it was such nonchalance I said well what's your trick how do you train your monks when they're so easy to train so very easy if they want to go this way let them go that way if they want to go that way I let them go that way it's so easy to try
- Coffee with a control freakAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Someone invites you for coffee then dictates Gloria Jeans not Dome, latte not cappuccino, Anzac biscuit not muffin, back seats not front, politics not Buddhism, exactly 90…
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this is where I come to my little simile which I developed over a few years of the coffee shop the similar the coffee shop goes like this now those of you whove come to every Retreat you are going to hear the same story again and again and again until you understand it it when you understand it you don't need to come to a retreat anymore you become enlightened so your Penance for coming every time is to hear the same stories every time so anyway this is a coffee shop simil someone gives you a call in the afternoon and say are you free this afternoon come for a cup of coffee they say okay I'm free this afternoon and then they tell you we are going to go to Gloria Jeans not Dome not coffee beans not Starbucks we're going to go to Gloria Jeans cuz I like Gloria Jeans I know you don't like Gloria Jeans by the way that this should be sponsored by Gloria Jeans I expect a free cup of coffee the next time I go there for sponsoring Gloria Jeans coffee shops and I should get sponsorship as a monk you know because I know this is actually recorded and you do go sort of uh uh online overseas and many people actually listen to my talks how many the talks in Mar how many people actually download them is that 30 40,000 that sort number so imagine we can get sponsorship I could sort of open up my robe and underneath the robe was where's it gone Gloria Jeans we can make a lot of money for the Buddhist society that way we can finish off the Damar NS monry no worries at all aab only uses Gillette razor place the possibilities are endless but anyway so she said I want to go to Glory jeans I don't want to go to those other coffee shops cuz I don't like them and you are going to have a latte not a cappuccino cuz I know you just know like your cappuccinos but I like lates and you're going to have one too and you're not going to have one of those muffins those blueberry uh nambi pambi muffins you're going to have a Anzac bis biscuit cuz it's like anac day soon so we're going to have a biscuit and that's what you're going to wait we're not going to sit out in the front where you like sitting we're going to sit in the back we're not going to talk about your stupid Buddhism we're going to talk about politics and I like talking about politics we're going to stay there for an hour and a half because that's how much time I have not an hour not 2 hours 1 hour and a half okay now if someone invited you for a cup of coffee and they told you where you going to go what coffee you going to drink what are you going to eat what are you going to talk about where you going to sit and for how long would you want to go with them of course not you make up some excuse I just remembered oh I'm terribly sorry I've got to go to the dentist this afternoon it slipped my mind I'm terribly sorry anything to get out of going with such a control freak
- Hands behind their backsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his one year as a schoolteacher in Devon, walking down a narrow lane at lunchtime, he meets two sixth-formers whose hands go behind their backs — the dead giveaway of a hidden…
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for one year I was a school teacher. I remember just having a big conflict inside of myself. Should I sort of discipline those children in this school for doing things which I would have done only two or three years earlier? I remember these kids coming down, it was a nice day and I went for a walk down this lane in this uh summer time and lay off and then I saw it was lunchtime in the county of Devon. It was a beautiful day. I went down a lane and I saw a couple of the sixth formers when I was grade 12 or probably this uh the equivalent of the first year at university in Australia coming down the road. And as soon as they saw me, a teacher, their hands went behind their back. I know what that was was cuz that's what I used to do. That's when you're smoking and you're trying to hide a cigarette. A dead giveaway. And it was a narrow lane, they couldn't miss me and they couldn't turn around, so they were very, very embarrassed. And I I told them, "Look, that's not the way to hide a cigarette." But there's no way I would discipline those kids, even though it was against the school rules, because I felt being a hypocrite. I was rebelling against those rules. So why should I sort of impose those rules on others?
- Nudge the bushfireAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From the 1991 crown fire at Serpentine he learned you can't control a bushfire by facing it head-on and saying stop. You nudge it this way and that — a bit of back-burning, a…
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living out in the bush in Serpentine and having been through some some of the worst bushfires over there in was it 1991? The hottest day of the year, the hottest day ever in Western Australia that day when we had a bushfire in Serpentine. There was another day a few months later which was even hotter. And that was a day a huge bushfire, crown fire came through our land. I learned a lot about bushfires there. How you can't control them. What you do is you nudge them this way and nudge them that way. You don't face them head on and say stop. Can't be done. You know by back burning, just by a little bit of fire break here, by watering this way just to push them slightly around. And that's the the they usually dealt with. Not the head-on control. That's waste time. So, you can nudge, but you can't control.
- Rumpelstiltskin — power in a nameAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He recalls the Grimm tale: know the demon's name and you have power over him. In the same way, putting names on silence, on people, on God, feels like control — and that is why…
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Rumpelstiltskin. You don't know that name? Okay. Oh, good. Glad you remember that cuz cuz apparently there was this, I don't know, magician or demon or spirit or something, I forget what it was really called, but there was this poor lady who was um was a a weaver and he said that you can weave gold out of straw. But if you don't find out my name, you'll have to marry me tomorrow or something. And so she had to she had to find out his name. Eventually she found out Rumpelstiltskin. And so, you know, he had to sort of let her go. But in I always remember many, many times if you knew somebody's name, you had power over them. This was like in ancient almost like magic of of Middle Age Europe. You had power if you knew someone's name
- The ghost who wanted the remoteStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Perth family told Ajahn Brahm that while they watched TV the channel kept changing by itself; each time they changed it back, it changed again. They concluded a ghost in the…
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people were telling me actually there is this place in Perth I won't say who is I'm not sure if they're there this evening they were telling me that they were watching the TV just a family and every now and again the channel would change it just automatically so they get the remote control they change it back again few seconds later the channel will change again you know what the cause was they found out it was a ghost there was a ghost actually in the house and the ghost wanted to watch a certain channel on the TV and the ghost doesn't need remote control they can just do it by themselves so if they wanted to watch the footy it doesn't matter what you want to watch that's what they would watch they want to watch a movie or a soapie then that's what the ghost would do and you so try and turn it back again but they would turn it back no no they won every time it was true so you know what they did they know how they solved the problem they didn't try to exercise the ghost they just bought another TV and that was for the ghost it's true that's what they did obvious solution so it's compassion and can't you respect these things you don't try and control them so they got one TV especially for the ghost in the house so the ghost can watch whatever they want and you can watch what you want
- The man whose thoughts ran awayStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a monk of one or two years in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm watches a man who comes to the monastery every morning grow more disturbed over four or five days: talking without…
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I remember seeing that happen once in this fellow who over space of 4 or 5 days when I was a young monk in Thailand, maybe 1 or 2 rains as a monk, 2 years as a monk, he would come to the monastery every morning and you could see he was going more and more crazy. There's no way nothing I could do about it. I didn't know what I was doing. I was observing at the time. He started talking and he wouldn't stop and the talking got more and more quick, more rapid, more incoherent and eventually just completely lost it. You can see that that thought was just going completely out of all bounds. The more he tried to control it, the worse it would get.
- The monk who gave the IT keynoteStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Though he says he knows little about computers, Ajahn Brahm accepts an invitation to give the keynote address at a World Computer Conference/Congress, simply because it is an…
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This is another thing which happened just today, I was checking the e-mail and I think I told some of you, if you got good memories that during the last retreat period I did take one invitation to leave the monastery and that was to go to this world computer conference in Brisbane. And the only reason I did that, I thought it was interesting I have never done that before. I am a monk okay I can get on a computer but I don't know anything about IT and there they asked me to give the keynote at the World Computer Conference in Brisbane last year. I thought that was interesting. That is a sort of challenge. I like doing weird things. So I rocked up there I gave a keynote and I just got the email they said from the organizers just this afternoon . And they said that was the most popular presentations. They put everything on the internet and that has been the most downloaded session and the President of the World Computer Society in Australia summarized it up and printed it out and published in the Australian, in the IT section. So there you go I am the expert on IT. Just the world renowned lecturer on IT.
- The postulant who tried too hard to be perfectStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A former monastery postulant tells Ajahn Brahm in Melbourne that he was so afraid of breaking a rule, controlling his body, speech and mind, that the tension became unbearable…
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There was one of the men I saw in Melbourne, he used to be an Anagarika in my monastery down in Perth a long time ago. But he was saying when he was first there, he was trying so hard to be perfect. He was so afraid of breaking a rule. And that's why he got so tense trying to control his body, control his speech, control his mind. He got so tense, he couldn't stand it and he left.