Stories about mind
11 Buddhist wisdom stories about mind from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- “Give me another hand”Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A GP tells the parents of a boy born deaf that an article reports 10% of such children can have hearing restored by a simple operation. The parents agree and it works. But the…
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There was a case which I read uh in a scientific journal. There was a boy who was born deaf and uh one day his parents took him for a medical checkup with his GP. his GP had just read an article, you know, in one of the medical magazines that some researchers had found that 10% of children who were born deaf could have their hearing restored and with a very simple operation but only 10%. So the doctor said it seems that your boy know might be one of those 10%. Would you like to give it a try? And you know the parents asked you know is it really invasive? is going to be painful. It's going to be a bit of discomfort, but you know, who knows? You know, your kid may hear as result of the operation. So, the parents gave the child the operation and it worked. The child could hear again. And as soon as the child recovered from the operation with his hearing restored, he was really angry and upset at his parents. Said, "Why did you not ask me if I wanted to hear?" He said, "This is a terrible, terrible noise. I've got to figure this one out now." He said, "If you really wanted to help me, give me another hand." Because he had learned to use his hands to explore the world where other people would have used sound. And when I realized that this was a person who was deaf, it was a person who understood what it was like. And he said, "That's actually much better." He preferred being deaf.
- Hypnosis made the ice bath feel warmStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a TV hypnosis show a man sat in freezing water convinced it was a warm bath and enjoyed it — illustrating how much of cold and pain is mental.
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put a person in a freezing cold tub of water but they convinced this guy under hypnosis that it was nice and warm, just like a warm hot bath. You like going in warm hot baths this time of year? Really nice, warm and hot is very very nice. I don't usually indulge but I remember one of the people here we went to Bhutan together. When I walked up this mountain when you came down again, all your legs were very sore because really exerting yourself. I remember just going into the bath, a good excuse at last, a monk can have a hot bath. Lovely just to relax there. But in this particular case it was ice cold water. But they convinced him it was a warm hot bath and he was having a wonderful time in the cold icy water
- “Monastery” — a word from his mother with Alzheimer'sStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Visiting his mother in London, who no longer recognises him, Ajahn Brahm spends two hours with her; out of the blue she says the word “monastery”, and his brother notices —…
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I was talking about this about my mother in London because she's got you know complete Alzheimer's disease two years ago a year and a half ago when I went to see her she just cannot recognize me she doesn't know who I am I I was with her for two years two sorry for two hours and just talking to her being with her she didn't know who I was although just strangely just out of the blue in two hours with all the talk she said she mentioned the word Monastery which was really weird and my brother picked up on that it was totally out of context with everything else she was saying but there was something in there just obviously uh knew that there was something monastic there you know with a person know she was with
- 'Nothing wrong with being crazy'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At Cambridge in the 1970s a friend who had taken LSD came up to Ajahn Brahm saying, 'I think I'm going crazy.' Ajahn Brahm told him, 'Well, nothing wrong with being crazy — just…
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what my friends this was in the ' 70s even though I never took these drugs myself know he took some LSD one day when I was at Cambridge and I remember just uh seeing him know bumping up to him and he came up to me and said I think I'm going crazy I'm going mad and sometimes people do go crazy actually he is now he a very wealthy act one of the most conservative um suit ridden persons you could ever imagine if I actually told his boss what he did when he was at College he'd get kicked out of the company but nevertheless I would never say such things but at the time that he took some LSD and he thought he was going crazy and I remember just going up and say well nothing wrong with being crazy just be crazy it's all right and then of course he calmed down it was a fear of going crazy which was driving him crazy
- Psychic battle with Hindu saintsStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In early meditation Ajahn Brahm's mind put on a movie: a psychic battle with Hindu saints flying and levitating and zapping each other. He enjoyed it — and of course, because it…
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I was fighting the psychic battle with the Hindu Saint flying around the air and they're levitating all over the place and zapping each other in my little movie really good fun so I was enjoying it of course because it was my movie I won as usually happens totally egotistical
- The emperor in five garmentsAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile he says he usually keeps for retreats: a powerful emperor is completely covered by boots, trousers, a jacket, gloves and a helmet, so you can't tell whether it is male or…
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imagine there's an emperor and this Emperor is a very very very powerful being and you know it affects you what this Emperor does this Emperor is clothed he's got boots or it's got boots you don't know if it's a he or she it's got boots which cover its feet and go right up to its thighs it's got trousers which cover the top of his boots and go halfway up his waist he got a jacket which covers the top of his trousers go to the elbows and go up to the neck and it's got these gloves which cover all the hands that go halfway up the arm and last it's got a helmet and this helmet just covers the hold of the face and halfway down the you know overlaps the tunic so the five pieces of clothing completely cover this Emperor so much so you don't know who this Emperor is whether it's male or female whether it's old or young whether it's African Caucasian Chinese or what and this is like the mind this mind this Emperor within you is covered with the five senses of seeing hearing smelling tasting and touching and that's why sometime we don't know what this mind actually is in a Buddhist way we want to try and unclothe the emperor take off these five senses of seeing hearing smelling tasting and touching to get to this six six sense the Mind
- The heart that remembered the murderStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Girl ~10–11 gets heart transplant; recurrent nightmare of being attacked and killed. Mother traces donor — murdered prostitute. Dream details match; police question suspect; he…
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there was a few stories of people who had heart transplants and They Carried some sort of memories of the previous owner of the heart there's one amazing story is a young girl had a heart transplant he must be only about 10 or 11 years of old and after the operation very good success when she was sent home afterwards so she started having nightmares recovered nightmares the same scene in The Nightmare all the time so she told her mommy her dream was that she was attacked in a dark Street and killed and murdered and it was so recurrent that her mother sort of went to the doctor and said there's something weird going on here my child has got the same dream night after night and she wakes up screaming and of course the doctor said oh it's just the trauma of the operation you know it's a very heavy operation it might have done something to the play but she'll get over it just forget about it take another Panadol or something I shouldn't say things like that I get trouble with the doctors in this audience but usually say if it doesn't go away within two weeks come back again we do some more tests but I'll being cheeky but I get away with that but anyway it didn't go away so she took it further so it kept on recurring again so that she she had some contacts in the hospital so she did a little bit of U uh suppose it's illegal improper searching to find out where this heart came from and she found out that the heart had actually come from a prostitute who had been killed and murdered and when she heard that she went to the police station and told all the whole story this is a dream of my daughter I just found out the heart came from a murdered person does her memory in dream match any of the situation only the circumstances of the murder and the police people they investigated the situation where the original owner of the heart was killed it matched and the information they got from this girl after you know she had a heart transplant the information she got from her dreams was enough for the police to identify a suspect question him and he confessed they caught him very weird and strange thing there was enough memories left in that heart to actually to find the killer of the old heart
- The man whose thoughts ran awayStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a monk of one or two years in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm watches a man who comes to the monastery every morning grow more disturbed over four or five days: talking without…
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I remember seeing that happen once in this fellow who over space of 4 or 5 days when I was a young monk in Thailand, maybe 1 or 2 rains as a monk, 2 years as a monk, he would come to the monastery every morning and you could see he was going more and more crazy. There's no way nothing I could do about it. I didn't know what I was doing. I was observing at the time. He started talking and he wouldn't stop and the talking got more and more quick, more rapid, more incoherent and eventually just completely lost it. You can see that that thought was just going completely out of all bounds. The more he tried to control it, the worse it would get.
- The most beautiful bamboo looked sick after the rideStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: After a UK meditation retreat he bikes through stressful traffic to revisit his favourite bamboo clump — days earlier the most beautiful in the world; now dry, desiccated, out of…
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my beautiful clump of bamboo - I just stared at it - it was gorgeous. I didn't move. The delight, because my hindrances were so suppressed I could just look at something and see it's deep beauty, gave rise to the stillness. The ability just to hold the perception, not really hold it, the perception held me, and just be there, enjoying every moment of this, that's where the restlessness disappears
- The polka-dot bow tieStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Kalgoorlie builder dying of cancer comes to the monastery for counselling about death, dressed as always in thongs, shorts and a singlet. After his closed-coffin funeral, his…
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one of the gentlemen um here he had a friend in Calgi who was a builder. The builder got cancer and the friend invited the builder to come to Bodin Island Monastery for some counseling about dying. And of course eventually the builder died. Even when he visited me, he visited me the best clothes he possibly could have which was always like thongs and shorts and a singlet. That's all the clothes he would wear. And then uh when he died it was a closed coffin. Of course I never went there. It was done in Kgori, but my friend who lived over here did and then a few days later friend was woken up in the middle of the night. Somebody had poked him. He thought of his thought it was his wife and he told his wife off and realized his wife was fast asleep. It wasn't her and he saw it was his friend who died. But what really surprised him, this builder was wearing a polka dot bow tie and a nice suit. He said, "This is weird." Cuz I'd never seen in my life him wear this s sort of clothing. And then he woke his wife up to say this is uh this guy has come to see us. And of course after he know lost that one or two moments of contact then she couldn't find him anymore. When he come and told me that story, I said, "Uh, did you see him in his coffin?" He said, "No, it was a closed coffin." And I said, "As soon as you can, please call his wife in Calguri." You know, he was living in Perth and ask, you know, um, what was No, just ask ordinary questions and then just ask in passing what was he wearing in his coffin? And that's when his wife admitted said, "Oh, you know, I bought him this suit years ago. He never wore it cuz he just like ordinary Australian garb." And so I dressed him in a nice shirt, a polka dot bow tie, and this um uh this suit cuz he would never wear it usually. Niku was dead. He couldn't complain. And that's exactly how he saw him in the in this vision.
- The wall that disappearedStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: As a young theoretical physicist, Ajahn Brahm sits at a Zen monastery in the north of England, in a converted cowshed, told to meditate with eyes open. Calm and without inner…
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I usually bring up this experience I had when I was a lay person. when I was meditating wherever I could find a place to meditate and this was in a Zen monastery in the north of England and in this Zen monastery I didn't know what I was supposed to do they just you know in the little hall which is a converted cow shed that we sat down and we had to meditate with our eyes open it one of the first times I'd meditated with my eyes wide open I didn't know what I was supposed to do but I just meditated. But because I'd done some meditation before and I knew how to be in the present moment and stop this inner speech, as I was just with my eyes open, just being very peaceful, very calm, a strange thing happened. One of those weird experiences which show you there's more to this world than you'd thought. And at this time I was a theoretical physicist when I just looked at this wall just a whitewashed wall. Then suddenly without warning the wall disappeared. It vanished. It just wasn't there anymore. Which was so weird. One minute there was a wall solid and now there was nothing there. And of course instead of getting scared or think I was going crazy I used know what we do in Buddhism called insight. What's happening? And it soon became very clear to me that this is just the nature of the physical senses especially the sense of seeing sight. If you watch something, put your full attention on watching and what you observe doesn't move or change. It disappears. The sense of sight turns off.