Stories about evidence
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about evidence from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- The boy who regretted rememberingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a talk on reincarnation at the London Buddhist Vihara, an 18- or 19-year-old comes up and tells Ajahn Brahm he is one of the cases in Ian Stevenson's book on children who…
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And I remember once giving a talk at the uh the London Buddhist Vihara, a Sri Lankan temple in London. It's very close to where my mother lived. And giving a talk on reincarnation, and a boy came out to me afterwards. And he was one of those cases in that book. He said, you know, "I'm one of those 20." And had a lovely conversation with him. When he was about this time about 18 or 19 when I saw him. And he told me personally, he said, "That was the worst thing I ever did in my life, tell someone about my past memories." Because he said once it was publicized, and he was only a young boy at time, he got hell at school. As you know what happens, you know, in school if there's anything about you which is weird or strange, you know, the other boys in the school tend to tease you about it. And he got a terrible teasing from his friends at school once they found out, once it became well known that he was one of these people who could remember his past lives. And when I actually heard his pain in having admitted that and told that coming out remembering his past life, it became very clear to me that this boy never got anything out of telling people that he was reborn except a lot of suffering. And that meant a lot to me in the sense that people don't invent these memories to to gain anything. In fact, when you tell people those memories, you lose a lot. There's nothing to gain out of that, but everything to lose. And so the very fact that he had to suffer with coming out about his memories meant something to me. It meant that it gave his memories that little bit more legitimacy legitimacy cuz it was hard and difficult for him to uh let people know what had happened to him. But there he was, it's wonderful to meet a person who uh was courageous enough or you may say stupid enough to tell people about their previous lives.
- The orphan chicken that says quackStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After years of the chicken-or-duck story, people sent him evidence: an orphaned chicken raised by ducks that goes quack quack — so a quack does not prove a duck.
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there was a real um chicken. It was a poor little chicken when he was born. was orphaned. So, it was adopted by a mother duck. This is true. I've got the paper somewhere in sometimes. Adopted by a family of ducks. And this little chicken goes quack- quack. It's a chicken. That's its species. That's what it is. But it goes quack quack. So, there is I've got evidence there is one chicken in this world at least who goes quack quack
- The tennis shoe on the window ledgeStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A patient who floated out of her body during an operation later reports a tennis shoe on a high windowsill of the operating theatre. Staff say that's impossible — it's cleaned…
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now one of the interesting cases was of this uh person having an operation in a theater operating theater in london in uk somewhere i think it was in bristol i could be wrong there but anyway they floated up above their body and afterwards they said that when they came back and they recovered they said that in the operating theaters an old operating theater there was a tennis shoe on the windowsill there's a weird thing to say and i said of course there's no ted issue on the windowsill you know on the inside you know this place is cleaned every day it's an operating theater has to be sterile what's a tennis shoe doing up there but she said it was certainly up there they couldn't see it from the floor so someone actually got a ladder and when they actually went up on the windowsill what do you think they found the tennis shoe is a famous example of someone seeing something which should not have been seen