Stories about forgiveness
44 Buddhist wisdom stories about forgiveness from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Adopt a Muslim orphanStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a Gandhi film clip, a Hindu whose son was murdered by Muslims asks what to do with his grief. Gandhi: adopt an orphan — and bring him up as a Muslim.
- Anger's trial with no defenceAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile from his own anger at a fellow monk: listing everything he didn't do, Ajahn Brahm sees he is justifying his anger like a court case where only the prosecutor may speak, no…
- Can we build that hall your way — and can I be the builder?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm's last real argument was with then-abbot Ajahn Jagaro over the design of Bodhinyana's meditation hall — notes left outside each other's huts for a week. Brahm came to…
- “Can you tell my parents for me?”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A girl who has come to the Perth temple since she was a toddler comes to Ajahn Brahm at 16 or 17: she's pregnant by her boyfriend and hasn't told her parents — “they'll kill me.”…
- Engine running in NorthbridgeStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a day out on business, a driver takes Ajahn Brahm to a Northbridge shop for 'the best pies in Perth' (just okay, he says — the only pies he doesn't like are magpies).…
- 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,…
- Good, bad — who knows? The king's fingerStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A king scratches his finger hunting; the court doctor only says 'good, bad, who knows?' When the finger worsens and must be amputated, the king jails the doctor. Later, captured…
- He punched the art teacher for smiling — then called him a friendStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: An Armadale-group artist who taught at Claremont smiled at a difficult colleague; the man punched him and flattened him. Years later the same man greeted him as an old friend and…
- “He's not my husband, he's my dad”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Malaysian retreat a young woman does all the talking in an interview while the quiet man beside her listens. Ajahn Brahm asks if that's her husband; both burst out laughing…
- 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…
- How many times should you forgive?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Singapore concert based on his book, asked how many times in Buddhism you should forgive someone who hurts you again and again, he answers: 'One more time.'
- I am the Thai pirateStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Early in his monkhood Ajahn Brahm was spun around by a poem of Thich Nhat Hanh from the boat-people years: I am the refugee, the pregnant woman, the woman raped by the Thai…
- “I forgive. No payback.”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Curtin University human-rights course, Dennis Eggington (later head of the Aboriginal Legal Service) tells Ajahn Brahm of a funeral at Karrakatta: two promising Noongar boys…
- 'I know all about it'Joke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A boy tells his teacher 'I know all about it' — she gives him $5 not to tell the headmistress. A friend explains: say it to anyone and they'll pay up. His mum gives him $10 not…
- “I never stopped loving you, George”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Cockney friend of the monastery leaves his wife of about 40 years for a much younger woman; his wife is devastated. Some years later, split from the second partner, he visits…
- I'm leaving — but there's only oceanStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Janice and her husband, finishing a mining contract in WA, sold their house, bought a yacht with another couple and sailed for Vancouver. Mid-Pacific the engine failed; the two…
- If I were President Bush after 9/11Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A week or two after 9/11, asked in Singapore what he would have done as President Bush, Ajahn Brahm says he would have gone on TV and forgiven everyone involved so no more…
- Loose robes at the yacht clubStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a talk on Buddhism to Perth executives at a yacht/boat club, a woman who grew up in a Catholic convent tells Ajahn Brahm that his constantly falling-off loose robes are a…
- 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 —…
- 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…
- Plant more flowersAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile for 'repressed' emotions: your garden has weeds and flowers. Weeding isn't repression. But better than pulling the weeds, plant more flowers and water them; soon the…
- She called me a pig — three more timesAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: If someone calls you a pig and you keep replaying it — she's got no right, why did she — a wise person sees you've just let her call you a pig three more times. Every memory is…
- Still in the POW campStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Two Australian veterans who were captured at the fall of Singapore and held in prisoner-of-war camps meet at a reunion. One asks the other whether he has forgiven the Japanese…
- Super Monk and the DreamWorks emailStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a new monk in Thailand Ajahn Brahm reads a comic of 'Super Monk' who flies and saves people — but instead of killing villains, gives them the five precepts so they become good…
- Thai insurgents forgiven — then hiredStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Northeast Thai insurgency collapses; rebel leaders give themselves up and instead of jail or execution are forgiven and given civil-service jobs. Years later in Sydney the Thai…
- The blank cheque he gave backStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a talk on generosity in which Ajahn Brahm muses that the finest gift would be a blank cheque, a man in the audience actually gives him one, signed. Ajahn Brahm keeps it for…
- “The door of my house will always be open to you”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Remembering his father, dead almost 50 years, at a Thai New Year merit ceremony: when he was 13, his poor father stopped his old green second-hand car near Churchfield Road in…
- 'The execution was too fast'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a conference on reconciliation and forgiveness, a Catholic priest tells Ajahn Brahm of relatives of a murder victim in the United States who attended the murderer's execution.…
- The half sheet of paperStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At an old man's funeral his widow holds up half a sheet of paper he kept in his wallet all his life. In grade school, as two factions of boys were about to fight, the teacher…
- The miner who thanked the man who cost him his legsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In early WA mining, a worker about to set explosives has nowhere to hide when a brakeless iron trolley rolls at him. It severs both legs; hours later he is found alive. He later…
- The monk who thanked his accusers for jailStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A senior Thai monk, next in line to become Sangharaja, is framed by a jealous rival with spliced tape recordings that make him seem a communist, and jailed. He blames no one —…
- The naughtiest noviceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Chah, laughing, tells Ajahn Brahm about his naughtiest novice: an old monk slept so deeply in the afternoons that nothing woke him, so the novice tried to push a jackfruit…
- The paralysed man who forgave his surgeonStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As reported in a Singapore newspaper article someone sent him: during spinal surgery a surgeon drops an instrument on a man's spine and paralyses him. Instead of suing, he says,…
- The poem by Adolf HitlerStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In Opening the Door of Your Heart he included a beautiful poem about a son's unconditional love for his demanding mother — and only afterwards does the reader see the author:…
- The retreat cook on work releaseStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Without a cook for a nine-day retreat at Jhana Grove, Ajahn Brahm finds Carl, a brilliant cook who does everything alone. At the closing thanks he has gone — back to the prison…
- The tribe that praises the wrongdoerStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recounts an email about a tribe untouched by other cultures: when someone does wrong — steals or hits someone — he stands in the centre of a circle of the whole…
- The twin who forgave at AuschwitzStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls an article about a woman who, as an identical twin at Auschwitz, was subjected to the experiments of Dr Mengele's team; as he tells it, her twin sister was…
- The widow who hugged her husband's killerStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, where those who truthfully confessed their crimes were granted amnesty, a white police officer, shaking, recounts in front…
- The wild horse that kissed the coffinStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Gerald in Hong Kong sent a photo-story: a man tamed a wild horse with only kindness and patience — no hitting or starving — until the horse would greet him with a mouth-kiss.…
- The worst thing she'd ever doneStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A woman dying of cancer meets Ajahn Brahm most Friday evenings. Wanting her to die free of her past, he asks in confidence for the worst thing she has ever done. After weeks of…
- They can steal the donations, not our happinessStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: During the rains retreat thieves break into the monastery's donation box; nobody knows how much they took. Instead of anger, Ajahn Brahm resolves: they can steal our money and…
- Trees give shade to the one cutting them downAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A forest sign in Sri Lanka: trees are so kind they even give shade to the person cutting them down — kindness that protects even those who harm you.
- Two child killings, two societiesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm recalls an article comparing two similar tragedies. In England, a toddler (Jamie Bulger) was abducted from a Liverpool shopping centre and killed on a railway line by…