Stories about crying
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about crying from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Australian boys don't cryStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A ~30-year-old South Australian on his first retreat weeps uncontrollably. Asked when he last cried, he says age 12 or 13 — when his father told him Australian boys don't cry.…
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And I remember telling this lady a few minutes ago about this guy. He was an Australian and he's about 30 and he came from South Australia and he came on one of his first retreats and during that retreat he started crying his eyes out. [clears throat] Ah, what's going on? Is something going wrong? I'm crying. And I asked him, "When was the last time you cried before today?" And he went silent and said, "I last cried when I was only about 12 or 13." That's when my father said, "Australian boys don't cry." That's obvious, isn't it? you know that if you suppress that crying there's a lot of tears have to come out you know you build them up for a long time and so he cried and cried and cried what the benefits of crying so much and I mentioned and it was actually true he told me afterwards cuz he was a single guy he said he got lots and lots of uh females on that retreat were very interested in [laughter] It's a very attractive thing to do, isn't it? To cry. So, I don't need to go to to wear fancy clothes. Learn how to cry.
- Tears at the Sarnath BuddhaStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On pilgrimage near Sarnath (deer park outside Varanasi), he searches the museum for the famous undamaged teaching Buddha with the wheel behind the head. Turning a corridor corner…
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And that was when we used to go on these pilgrimages to India. And there's one of the places that you know it's just outside of Binaris Finani in the deer park and just outside of the deer park that's where you know the Buddha gave his first sermon. It's one of the important pilgrimage sites for Buddhists. But what I really wanted to do was actually go and see this what they call the Sunat Buddha statue. He's got this big circle in the back of his head and the five um little uh first disciples and it was unearthed, you know, uh by the British when they were doing renovations or just uh looking after that site and it was almost totally undamaged. But it's not like it was just totally undamaged. It was it had some really power to it. And so I've seen that on many many photos and on book covers as one of the great works of art from India concerning the Buddha. And I knew it was in the museum there somewhere, but I never knew where. And there was no guide books and no guides. So when I got into that museum just outside Sat in India, I was just exploring trying to find out where the heck is this and it was just at the end of a corridor and I just was wondering just where is this? [snorts] Turned the corner and saw it at the end of the corridor and my eyes just burst out weeping. Couldn't stop myself. And it's, you know, it it is a very beautiful, it's acknowledged to be one of the most beautiful statues of a Buddha. For some reason or another, it just brings out a sense of peace, kindness, and it is now before we knew about uh the different forms of gender that was just in between. It wasn't male.