Stories about language
5 Buddhist wisdom stories about language from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Can I have a pineapple, please?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At poor Wat Pah Pong, requisites were kept in a big water jar and you asked Ajahn Chah for what you needed. Needing soap, the new monk asks in his halting Thai — but mixes up the…
Read full story
And of course, you know, the first time I learnt the Thai language, many of the Thai people know this story. That very early days in Thailand, all the monasteries were very poor. Wat Pah Pong where Ajahn Chah lived when I first went was really poor. So whenever you got anything, they had a big water jar. And you just put those things in the water jar, maybe toothpaste or toothbrushes, or anything you needed, like a towel. And so if you needed something, you just go and ask Ajahn Chah and say, "I need some toothpaste" and he just look inside there and said, "There is some. " and just give it to you. So this time I needed some soap, obviously you know to wash. But you had to ask in Thai so you know my Thai was not that good. So, the word for "soap" is S̄bū̀, not "S̄ạbpard". It's hardly any differences there, "S̄ạbpard" ,"S̄bū̀" but apparently "S̄ạbpard" means pineapple. So, I asked my great master, "Can I have a pineapple, please?" [laughter] And he said to me, he's very kind, he said, "What do you want the pineapple for?" I said, "To wash!" He never let me forget that. He said, "Oh, you know people in England, you know, they don't use soap like us. They are far more advanced, they use pineapples. [laughter] This Western culture is way ahead of ours."
- Late-night Thai TV in BangkokStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After flying Perth–Bangkok from a 3.30 a.m. start, Ajahn Brahm is scheduled for a 10.30 p.m. live Thai TV interview. Nested: the Perth Thai talk hearers thought was Pali. On air…
Read full story
It was very, very dodgy when I went to Bangkok all the way from Perth, getting up really early in the morning, to get to the airport, to get on the plane, I got up about 3.30 in the morning, and by the time I got to Bangkok late in the afternoon, I found out they had scheduled me for a TV interview at 10.30 p.m. I just had time for a quick shower and [went] back to the studios, which is not so bad, but it was in Thai. Sometimes you think I'm fluent in Thai, but once - here in Perth - there were some visiting Thai people and they asked for some teaching, so I taught them maybe 15 minutes of Buddhism in Thai. And afterwards they said they were so impressed. "We didn't realize that you could give a speech in Pali." [audience laughing] That wasn't Pali, that was Thai! "Oh", the Thai people said, "really?" In other words, they didn't understand a word of it - not one word. [audience laughing] And here I was on live TV, making an idiot of myself, I thought, speaking in Thai, but I did really well. There were actually two other Thai people there, two Thai monks being interviewed, one was the rector of Mahajula Lukon university Venerable Dammakosaja and he was very good, but the other fellow being interviewed was a Thai monk who was a resident in a Buddhist monastery in Oxford. And apparently, afterwards, my Thai, even though I'm a Westerner, that came across much more fluent than this Thai guy who was staying at Oxford for the last few years. [audience laughing] And I thought "How can that be?" Well, I was from Cambridge and he was from Oxford. Cambridge is always supreme.
- Raining cats and dogsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: People whose first language is not English, translating 'it was raining cats and dogs' word for word into their home language, laugh because cats and dogs do not fall from the…
Read full story
And a good example of that is when people who come to Australia and English is not their first language where they have to try and translate things like it was raining cats and dogs and if they translate that word by word into their original home language they start laughing because of course to rain means to come down from the sky and it never happen that a cat and dog has fallen from the sky from a tree may be but not from the sky and if you do translate word for word you actually miss a lot of the meaning of what was meant to be conveyed
- The past is un-effableAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He coins a word-play: instead of 'ineffable' (too deep for words), the past is 'un-effable' — you cannot 'if' your past. Stop rewriting old choices; make them work now.
Read full story
IN-IF-ABLE, you can't IF the past. By that I mean you can't say "IF that, whoever it was, didn't get Covid or if they hadn't traveled or IF there was more tests or IF, you know, I wasn't busy this weekend or if, if, if." The past is "iniffable"
- Where's the bog then?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Brahm's Cambridge neighbour, a Yorkshireman from Leeds (he says 'from Ukraine' then corrects), arrives at Emmanuel College and asks in a thick accent 'Where's the bog…
Read full story
One of these friends who was lived next door to me in the student accommodation from Ukraine, but he was actually from from Leeds, Yorkshireman. And as soon as he went into Cambridge University, Emmanuel College, the first thing he said when he arrived was, where's the bog then? If you understand, where's the toilet? But he said it in such a thick accent they looked at him and said, where are you from? You know, what sort of planet are you from?