Stories about India
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about India from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ānanda Maṅgala left the TrappistsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ānanda Maṅgala — Gandhi youth leader, friend of Nehru — tries Trappist life, then becomes a Buddhist monk; Trappist superiors summon theologians to talk him out of it.
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Ananda mongala he was a great man cuz he had a great sort of uh CV he started off his life as like the head of the Gandhi youth movement and so he was very friendly with all of the the Gandhi family and with Nero and all these other people and uh then he decided to take a spiritual life and become a trapist monk and I to become a Trappist monk he didn't like that decided to become a Buddhist monk I remember him always telling the story when he told his Superior his abot in the trais monastery they wanted to become a Buddhist they were very very upset and so they took all theologians he was a prominent person in South Asia
- Ghost stories on the walk to the graveStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a Chinese burial in Kolkata Cemetery he kills ten minutes walking with an elderly funeral director and asks for ghost stories — she has heaps, treating cemetery ghosts as…
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Kolkata Cemetery. There was a Chinese funeral and so those of you who know Kolkata cemetery that you start at the gate and we go in procession leading the cortees in this case was a burial and the Chinese burial site is the furthest away from the entrance and I knew I've been there many times about 10 or 15 minutes walk so I knew I had no know uh 10 minutes to kill that's the wrong word at a funeral but you know I knew it's just know 10 minutes walk. So we were just uh the funeral director, she was an elderly woman and uh I said, "How long you been in this industry?" And she said, "Oh, you know, for 20, 30 years." Said, "Oh, great. Just to pass the time till we get to the the grave site. Have you got any ghost stories
- The leper's smile was bigger than anyone's in PerthStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a Ganges tour, walking back to the tourist bus through a leper colony, Ajahn Brahm is approached for money. Explaining he is a monk who cannot carry money fails; he hugs the…
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One thing which changed me was when I went over to India. When I went over to India, I remember seeing this Actually, we you know, we went on this little tour down the Ganges River and on the way back to the bus to take us to our nice hotel, as people do when you visit India. On the way back, we passed through this leper colony. First time I seen real lepers. This is quite a few years ago. And of course, you know, they weren't all that hygienic. They had bandages on, but you know, dirty bandages. You can see the blood and pus coming out through the the bandages. And of course, they were coming to me, not because I had a brown robe, because I had a white face. And a white face meant money. So, they came and asked me for money. And I tried and I was stupid monk sometimes. I tried to say to them, said, "I'm a Buddhist monk. I don't have any money. That's one of my rules." And how would a leper understand English for a start? In India. And I realized I was getting nowhere. So, the only thing which I could do, which I thought I could give him, I could just give him some compassion, kindness. I just put my arms around him, gave him a hug and a big smile. Now, I gave him what I thought was a big smile. But what that leper gave me back was a much bigger smile than I've ever seen for years. I can't see any of you smiling like that leper. Even now. That was a big smile. And that blew me away. And I always remember that to this day. Actually, I could I can visualize it now. How on earth, I thought, you know, on the bus and many other days on that trip, how on earth can a leper be so happy? And he was showing incredible happiness. And when I came back to Perth, where are those smiles? And you haven't got leprosy. You've got nice houses, good health, health card. You can go to any hospital under Medicare. You can get bulk billed if you're poor. You eat very well. You sleep very well. You can go on holidays overseas and live in air-conditioned houses or heaters this time of the year. What are you worried about? And you started to see from that that suffering is not just having no food in your belly. Suffering is not sleeping out in the cold. In Australia, the suicide rate is much, much higher than in Benares, India, with all the poverty there. Why is it that those lepers would never contemplate killing themselves? But rich, beautiful, wealthy, young people in Perth do. Why?