Stories about loss
4 Buddhist wisdom stories about loss from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- How dare you take away my grief?Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a talk on freedom from pain, a mother of a Claremont serial-killer victim eyeballs Brahm: how dare you try to take away my grief — sincerity that shocked him.
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this woman came up to me afterwards and I was kind of shocked by what she said. Apparently she was one of the mothers of uh those group of young women who became known as the the victims of the Claremont serial killer. And no one knew exactly who uh that person was. But then when I gave this talk about how to find freedom from that pain, she came up to me and she put her nose almost right on top of my nose. She was like really eyeballing me. And she said, I remember her comments, "How dare you try and take away my grief?
- Paṭācārā, who lost everythingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Paṭācārā, from a good family, runs away with her low-born lover. Pregnant, she tries to return to her parents to give birth but delivers on the way; the second time too. Her…
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But I always tell them about one of the greatest nuns that ever was. Her name was Patara. And her story was that she'd run away with her lover. She came from a very good family. Her lover I think was just a lowborn. But they loved each other were both very good. And eventually she had a child and they thought if they go back to their parents' house, you know, when they just let themelves or let them her give birth in her parents' house, that would actually make the parents a bit more amunable to her husband. But they she gave birth on the way. So they went straight back to their village. And so they tried that a second time. And again she gave a like a few days premature birth and I was in the forest and after the new baby was born. Her husband who you know just really looked after her, loved her to bits, went looking for some wood to keep her warm and took a piece of wood but it was a snake and the snake bit him and he died. So, so she'd just given birth to her second child and now she lost her husband, Snakebite. So, she decided she had to go back to see her parents. No husband had died. She had two kids. But then she had to cross a big stream which was in flood and she had like a two or three year old kid and a new baby. What should she do? So she put the baby or she put the the told the new kid no told her two or three year old son you wait on this bank and I'll wade across the stream with the new baby and then I'll put the baby down on the other side and come for you and if I if you see me waving or something then just come straight away. So she got across the stream with her new kid, put the kid down sort of in a safe place on the dry bank, and then waited back again to get her elder son. But as she was midstream, she saw a big eagle come and swoop on her little baby. And of course, she was frantic. She waved her hands around trying to scare the bird away. But instead, the bird wasn't scared. She was in the middle of the stream. So, the bird took away her baby. And her 2-year-old kid thought mommy was calling him and weded into the river and got swept away. So, now she lost two kids. And if that wasn't bad enough, when she was trying to make her way back to her village that she heard from somebody there had been a big storm in that village the night before and her two parents had been killed in the storm. She'd lost her two children, parents and her husband on the same day. Now you can imagine what grief does to you. She went mad, crazy. She didn't know what to do, where to go. But eventually, she wandered into the temple totally naked and screaming her head off. And she when she walked into the temple, the Buddha was giving a sermon. And so people there at the edge of the the crowd, the congregation, the audience said, "You can't come in here. You're badly dressed. you're crazy. But the Buddha said, "No, let her in." You know, she was a young woman, you know, just given birth to a couple of children, maybe in her 20ies, and the Buddha out of kindness said, "Let her in." And one of the monks got his robe and put it around her so she was a little bit more uh decent. And that was the start of Patara's um entry into being a a nun. And one of the reasons I tell that story as a great tragedy, great grief. But then that nun became one of the most famous teachers in the whole of the nuns community. cuz this is just not what other people tell me cuz I remember just reading all these stories of great nuns in the time of the Buddha. And I think many of you may be able to relate to this. Sometimes you've been meditating and meditating and meditating and practicing going on retreats but sometimes you're getting nowhere. You feel my meditation a brah talks about these nimitas and janna and stuff like that. I've got nowhere near that. Why not? And this was some of the nuns were like that. And then they said, you know, in their little record of their enlightenment that this great nun came and taught them how to meditate. And they were just enlightened within a few days. And that nun's name was Patara. That was her amazing teacher.
- Thank you, burglarStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: When burglars steal generators, chainsaws and expensive equipment from the Bodhinyana workshop, Ajahn Brahm thanks them: the gear was old, and insurance bought new — they came…
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Recently we had a break-in at Bodhinyana monastery. They pinched some chainsaws. Straightaway, I said they can pinch the chainsaws, they can steal that, but they're not going to steal our peace and compassion. We're not going to worry about that. In fact it turned out to be really good because those chainsaws were quite old and the insurance allowed us to get much better ones. [laughter] So if ever that thief is around, come up here and we'll say thankyou.
- The 1991 bushfire and the hut that 'should not be here'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On 31 January 1991, at 47–48°C, a crown fire sweeps through Bodhinyana; eucalypts explode one after another and the monks evacuate, sure the monastery he worked years to build…
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it's an anniversary tomorrow, January 31st, 1991, when the temperature of Bodhinyana Monastery reached about 47, 48 degrees. And that was before the fire came. It was a huge bushfire that day. Crown fire came right through our monastery. And there you were. This monastery which I spent how many years about, so many years building up and when you have one of these bushfires, I don't know, this was hotter than the Toodjay fire which was earlier on. This was a huge fire. And when you're actually in these fires, it's amazing to see just the power of nature. Because these eucalypt trees, when it gets that hot, the eucalypt oil evaporates and it forms this mist around the tree, mixed in with oxygen. It's like a bomb waiting to go off. And this is what happens. Just know when an ember comes into that explosive mixture. The whole tree explodes. It was like explosions. This whole big tree would burst. It wouldn't be fire coming from the top or the bottom. It'd be like this ball of flame around the whole tree, all in one second, this huge noise like a bomb. Tree after tree after tree. We had to evacuate. There was no choice. Evacuate for our lives. And when we evacuated, I looked back upon that monastery, which I'd worked so hard to build up, and you thought, nothing can survive. None of those buildings. They were right in the middle of these trees. They'd all be burned to ashes. And when I left, I remember just going to the bottom of the hill, and from the southwest highway looking up and seeing the whole hillside explode in flames, one after the other. The other monk who was with me, he tried to get up, and he was arguing with the policeman, blocking Kingsbury Drive, and saying, that's my monastery up there. I want to get up. He said, you can't. I want to get up. I want, you can't. And then a few explosions happened, and the policeman said, do you want to go up? He said, no. That was true. So you left it there. And I remember that night, sleeping on the shearer's shed in a farm close by, just thinking, all that hard work. And those of you there at the time just know how much hard work which I put into that monastery, personally building it. All gone. And actually I slept soundly, because I thought, Wonderful I'd given up so much time. What a wonderful thing I'd achieved. And it didn't matter that there was going to be a monastery there the following day. What was most important to me was that I'd put all that energy and effort into it, and so much love and care. That was my success. Not the fact there was a monastery there at the end of the day. The fact that I put so much care and effort and energy into what I did. And I was so happy with that. I slept well. And of course those of you who know the story, the following morning you got up there, and it was all remaining. There was a caravan which was burned, but all those huts, those buildings which you see there, were totally survived. And even though it was a far more intense bushfire than you saw it at Toodyay. Even I remember just one of the, the head of the bushfire, they didn't call it FISA in those days, the head of the bushfire brigade. He had to come for the investigation, and I took him around. I remember him seeing one of the huts, and I'll never forget the words he said. He looked underneath it and around it, examined it totally, and then he turned to me and said, Brahm, this should not be here.