Stories about danger
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about danger from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Lost in the mist: follow the streamStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a student in the far north of Scotland, the youth-hostel warden sends him up a second mountain alone. At the summit Atlantic clouds roll in within minutes; he can't see his…
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when I was a student I used to spend a lot of vacations up in the Highlands of Scotland I would take a tent and go in solitude for a few days it was maybe a natural monk so on one occasion I was staying at a youth hostel in the far north of Scotland in the mountains and the warden of the youth hostel beautiful day today let's go to a walk up on top of the mountain so we went together that three or four hours we got to the top again a wonderful sunny day in Scotland there was another man who'd it's going to the top of that mountain as well and the warden said no you go by yourself he was a local man he should not have allowed me to go by myself in the wilderness you don't go alone because this is what happened as I got to the summit of the second mountain the clouds came in from the the ocean the Atlantic Ocean and they came in so fast there's a clear sunny day one minute ten minutes later the clouds have come down and I was enveloped in the mist I couldn't even see the hand in front of me I thought I had a sense of direction so I turned around and decided to walk down the mountain again and I came bitter within one step that distance it was a vertical cliff if I hadn't been mindful I wouldn't be here that really scared me this was dangerous I could not see where I was going I was lost with no sense of direction so I stood and thought considered solution to the problem basic science find a stream even a little book because water always flows downhill so I found a little book followed it another little rivulet came into it got bigger and big when I followed it down and down whichever way at me ended I'd follow it follow it with it asleep until it got so low down I was underneath the mist and I could see my directions and that's how I got back a long time later to the youth roster
- The blast that became a spiritual experienceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: WA northwest miner drills and sets explosives alone at night; a charge comes straight toward him — survival becomes a 'marvelous spiritual experience at the end of the tunnel'.
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mines in the northwest. Now, this is many years ago. And his job, apparently, he told me, was to drill um the holes, you know, in the rock face, I'm not sure what they were mining, put the explosives in and set them off to actually to crack the rock face. And so the he would work at night alone cuz it was a dangerous work at that time. and his the other workers would come in the middle of the day and once he crack cracked the rock face with the explosives then they would come and um uh dig out the the ore and he said he'd been doing that for many times and very very careful and very very skilled with explosives but that actually was his downfall. He was so skilled that you know the the tunnel was almost perfectly round and he was working one night and he heard a sound of something coming towards him a strange sound. He realized it was one of the the carts, the orc cars, and it was coming straight towards him because someone had left off the brake. And he realized there was no way to go that that would actually come straight towards him. And because he was so good with his explosive work, there was no nook or cranny to hide. He was going to hit him. And the very last minute, he just tried to jump, you know, above the cart, but it caught his leg and cut it off. And he realized that there had been no one coming to meet him for another few hours until the next shift started. And there he was, you know, in the darkness in, you know, the end of the mine shaft with a leg cut off, bleeding, in great pain. They did manage to get him in time before he lost too much blood and he got taken to the hospital and he said there was a wonderful thing which happened to him. He said had this marvelous spiritual experience at the end of the tunnel