Stories about family
44 Buddhist wisdom stories about family from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ask if she's still thereStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Counseling a woman whose mother is on life support, he advises sitting, holding the hand and asking whether she is still there. In a Chinese family in Malaysia/Singapore the…
- Charlie's mark on the heelStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A healthy Thai woman's first baby, Charlie, is stillborn after turning in the womb days before birth. Ajahn Brahm conducts the funeral; little Charlie is dressed and photographed…
- Dad's 'Saturday injections'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At 10 or 11, Ajahn Brahm makes the primary-school football team, but his father must work Saturday mornings. After kick-off he turns and sees his father cheering on the…
- Daddy, what does tax mean?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A businesswoman aunt in Sydney who hated paying tax dies; soon after, the nephew's baby is born. At three, seeing a tax billboard on a NSW motorway, the child asks what tax…
- Families around the toothpaste-tube lampStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his first weeks in a poor Northeast Thai village — no electricity, dirt roads, no TV — Ajahn Brahm walks through at night to a chanting. On every stilt-house veranda, by the…
- Father and son who couldn't remember whyStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Blessing a house in Brisbane, Ajahn Brahm learns the father and his eldest son haven't spoken or seen each other for seven years. He has the younger son phone his brother,…
- Four old men outside in the rainStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Chinese parable: wealth, success, love and harmony stand as old men in the rain; the family can invite only one in first — harmony must enter or the other three will not stay.
- Give me the phone — call your other sonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After Bundaberg visit, lunch in Brisbane: host has two sons, one estranged for years. Brahm asks for the number, takes the phone and reconnects them.
- Goat for dinnerJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A mother-in-law coming to dinner asks her grandson what's on the menu. 'Goat,' he says — he overheard his father telling his uncle on the phone, 'We're having the old goat for…
- Grandmother with dementia still knew the monkStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Near the end, grandmother has long dementia; in a UK ward she recognises Brahm at once while barely recognising his brother.
- Harrow Brook neighbours filled the sitting roomStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Mother injured; blood trail into the apartment; before the ambulance, Harrow Brook neighbours pack the sitting room asking how to help — a village in a high-rise.
- He judged the violin — then heard the old womanStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A poor mountain father sacrifices for his children's education; they prosper in the city, send him a fine violin he cannot play — it sounds awful. Years later in town he hears…
- 'He's not going' — then 'You go'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a parents' evening when Ajahn Brahm was about 14, his maths teacher told his father the boy was doing so well he might go to Cambridge. His father — a sick man from a poor…
- Her mother stopped shoutingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A young woman in Bangkok whose whole family came to his talks never did herself — until she noticed her mother had stopped shouting at her so much. She came to the Phuket retreat…
- Her mother-in-law had the face of GuanyinStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Vietnamese woman married to an Australian could not win over a hostile (possibly racist) mother-in-law despite food, chanting and metta. Falling asleep in a temple she saw…
- I can't believe how much my father has grownJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Mark Twain (as Brahm tells it) runs away at ~18, returns years later and writes with satire that he can't believe how much his father has grown — meaning Twain had changed, not…
- I'm leaving — with five Singapore dollarsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Singapore psychotherapist recognises his leaving-home story: at six she packed a suitcase, got five dollars, and her busy mother told her to get her own lunch.
- It's not the cough that carries you offJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Mother's line: it's not the cough that carries you off — it's the coffin they carry you off in.
- Jack Kornfield waited outside Elizabeth ArdenStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Jack Kornfield back in the US still in robes visits his sister; she is in Elizabeth Arden; he sits outside in the chairs waiting — Westerner in robes amid the beauty salon.
- Jimi Hendrix drowning out Dad's Frank SinatraStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm's father, whom he loved deeply, died when Ajahn Brahm was 16. As a 14- or 15-year-old, whenever his father put on a Frank Sinatra record, he would put on Jimi Hendrix…
- “Monastery” — a word from his mother with Alzheimer'sStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Visiting his mother in London, who no longer recognises him, Ajahn Brahm spends two hours with her; out of the blue she says the word “monastery”, and his brother notices —…
- Monk uncle spoils the brother's parenting lectureStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Visiting as 'monk uncle', Brahm's niece and nephews ask what Dad was like young; he starts listing his brother's childhood misdeeds. The brother walks in furious — he is trying…
- Mum left him on the High StreetStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a child in London his mother leaves him outside on the High Street while she shops — early lesson in trust, fear and return.
- Mummy, you're nicer after meditationStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A tired Armadale Tuesday-night mother almost skips class until her six-year-old insists she go — because she is a much nicer mummy when she comes home from meditation.
- My father's resolutionStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: His father never spoke of his own father in Liverpool. At 14 or 15 Ajahn Brahm finally gets it out of him: 'Your grandfather was a bastard.' A plumber, he came home drunk almost…
- New monks ask mum and dad for forgivenessStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At Bodhinyana ordinations the candidates bow three times to their parents and ask forgiveness for everything they did and failed to do growing up. Mothers — and often fathers —…
- 'Now I've got you exactly where I want you'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A monk visiting his family in Chicago slips on the ice and breaks his leg. When his mother comes into the hospital room, he has never seen her smile so much. 'Now, son, I've got…
- Parents who argued, then made upStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a tiny London flat Ajahn Brahm watched his parents argue until they would not speak for an hour or two, then make up in front of the children. Seeing both the quarrel and the…
- Permission to go — peaceful funeralStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He tells a daughter she is holding her dying mother back; she gives full permission to depart. The mother dies within 24 hours. At the Thai funeral's first rites, husband and two…
- Peter already knew — Mom had just visitedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Peter in Australia answers the phone: sister says Mom's dead. He already knows and is not upset — Mom's mind-made form had just visited, smiling, giving love one last time across…
- Razor blades sewn into the flat capStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: His father, apprenticed as a bricklayer in late-1920s East End London, was taught first to sew razor blades into the peak of his flat cap so he could slash anyone who gave him…
- Telling the kids what their dad got up toStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Visiting his brother, Ajahn Brahm tells his young nephew and niece about all the naughty things their father did at their age; fascinated, they beg for more. Their dad walks in:…
- That's not the dress I bought for herStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Mother in a locked dementia ward; brother first notices she is wearing someone else's dress — clothes get swapped on the ward — then catches himself and softens.
- The bomb next door in the BlitzStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: During the London Blitz a bomb falls right next to the terraced house where Ajahn Brahm's mother and grandmother are. The neighbours, only five or six metres away, are killed…
- The father who carried his son through the raceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From a video someone sent him: an American father always takes his autistic son with him on Ironman-type runs — 30 km through rain and up mountains, the son on his back — and the…
- The lottery winners who couldn't find their kidsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A UK couple win about £40 million and buy a huge dream mansion — then sell it a year later, because the house is so big they can never find their children. They realise something…
- The medium who named Auntie Opal's husbandStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Just after WWII, Ajahn Brahm's mother and his aunt Opal, close as sisters, visit a medium for fun. The medium tells Opal she will soon meet her husband — first name Donald,…
- The medium, then Donald asked her to danceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: His auntie (cousin to his mum, still alive at 96–97) visited a medium with his mother before a dance; afterwards a man named Donald asked her to dance — they married for sixty…
- The pound note that blew into the fireStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his poor London childhood, a gust blows his father's one-pound note off the shelf into the coal fire; his father burns his hand trying to save it and his mother weeps — it was…
- The shire ranger's mother at the foot of the bedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: English shire ranger living alone in northern WA wakes mid-night; turns on the light; his sick mother stands clear at the foot of the bed smiling love for six or seven minutes —…
- The Singapore spirits helped the Ang MoStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An English ex-army dental technician with a Singaporean wife visits the in-laws, gets bored, and is taken to the races. They clean a messy temple for luck first; that night he…
- The woman who wasn't her motherStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After deep meditation on retreat, a woman tries recalling her earliest memory and sees herself being breastfed — by someone who isn't her mother. Alarmed, she asks Ajahn Brahm…
- “This is my son, the monk”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On his first visit home after seven years as a monk, when monks in London were seen as weirdos, Ajahn Brahm asks to join his mother on her Saturday shopping, expecting her to be…
- “We love you, Dad”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Two daughters sit holding their comatose father's hands in a Perth hospital. After his last breath he opens his eyes, sits up and looks at them; in unplanned unison they say “We…