Stories about hardship
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about hardship from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ajahn Chah soaked to the skinStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Walking alone on tudong in the Thai jungle, with all his possessions on his back, Ajahn Chah put up his umbrella-tent with its mosquito net one night in a harsh storm. It gave no…
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One of the things he did, remember he was uh just uh walking in the jungles of Thailand by himself. They called it just going on this um uh like dutanga. All your possessions on your back, sleeping in uh under a little umbrella with a um what's it called? A mosquito net on the outside, having such few possessions. And one day when he put up his uh little sleeping umbrella, the rain was just really harsh. And just like you know, we've had some big storms here. When you have a big storms like that, the umbrella just doesn't save you anything. And it's everything he had, every robe which he had, everything which he had was just soaked to the skin. There's no one there to talk to. and he felt just so alone and almost like rejected at the time and just so wet. He said, "This is not what I really expected meditation to be like.
- Sixty mosquitoes on one armStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Evening group sittings in the Thai jungle start at 6 p.m., exactly when mosquitoes come for dinner — and bald, bare-shouldered Western monks are a new cuisine, protected because…
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going back to the the mosquitoes there sometimes when you're meditating in that jungle there's no mosquito nut so we don't need to actually sleep out of the mosquito n the rest of the time we be outside and we do these old group sittings group meditation usually in the evening I don't know why our teacher had to sit about 6:00 p.m. was just the time when the mosquitoes came out they came out for their dinner and I was there dinner and as I've mentioned here before think about it again sort of as a monk you've got more Exposed Skin we have a bare shoulder we have no hair so literally it's more seats at the dinner table for the mosquitoes that's number one more importantly this we were some of the first westerners in that area I went I remember many villages which are where I went people have never seen a white man before I remember just going on arms round and when people go MKS go on arms around people put food in the bowl they're supposed to do it mindfully but these people they never seen a white man before so they're just looking at me and all the food dropped outside the bowl so I went hungry this very disappointing said don't worry about what I look like I'm hungry but imagine the mosquitoes as well that was the first time there was Western food in that Forest so you know what it's like when there's a new Cuisine then know everybody wants to try it out so all these mosquitoes were trying out the new Western Cuisine and they knew that it was safe because we're not even allowed to swap them it's really unfair they take advantage of our compassion so so it seriously it was very very tough to bear and was with another Monk we used to count the mosquitoes on our arm and head and he gets to somewhere like 60 or 70 at once and you could not count because they were too close together you couldn't distinguish one all you could do is hear this slurp slurp slurp as your blood was being drained from your body that of course was my imagination but the only way I could cope was actually by really meditating properly in other words I didn't have any opportunity to be dull or to lose my mindfulness and to be restless in think of all sorts of things because if my mind went away from my meditation object which was a breath straight away you'd feel your irritating really itchy arm with so many mosquitoes on it so you could really taught me how to meditate and go deep enough you could let go of your body so you couldn't feel it anymore you'd be deep inside now with your mind and you couldn't feel or hear or you know have any of the senses left you were going deep in meditation and as those meditations taught me about what this actual mind is and its energy and how it is really independent of your body