Stories about mind and body
5 Buddhist wisdom stories about mind and body from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- 'Goodnight, Paul'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A non-Buddhist couple in Perth came to the monks, bewildered. Home from hospital with their newborn second son, they asked the older boy to say goodnight to his brother.…
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that uh couple in Perth, they weren't Buddhist, but they came to see us because, you know, their young child, second boy, just came out out of hospital with the mom, just been born, and they asked the older boy, "Please say goodnight to your brother." And the older boy lent over the the pram and said something like, "Goodnight, Peter." And Peter replied back, "Goodnight, Paul." He was only a couple of weeks old. And then, of course, they were stunned. They're not supposed to be able to speak at that time. But then, uh Paul said once more, "Goodnight, Peter." And Peter said the second time, "Goodnight, Paul." And they were so confused. That's why they came and saw the monks. And thought we could understand. Yeah. Just the baby's being reborn. He's using his mind, not his brain. Brain is not capable of that yet.
- Meditating through the feverStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Three or four weeks into an undiagnosed fever (later found to be scrub typhus) in a basic Ubon hospital ward, with no energy and nothing working, the young monk feels low and…
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But I do remember one of the times. And I wish I had been a bit more mindful, but I can understand why I wasn't cuz I had such such incredibly low energy. Never had so much low energy as that time fever of about 3 or 4 weeks. And anyway that uh one day I got sort of depressed but not a depression which was um negative. I don't know that I thought oh this is really awful. Nothing's working. This is terrible. So why don't I do some meditation actually practice know what my teacher would teach me what the Buddha would say do something useful. And this was like three weeks or four weeks into a a very heavy fever and nothing was working, feeling just so exhausted. So I decided to meditate and obviously not cross-legged but just laying on the bed, laying on my back or half on my back, half on this, half on that and being able just to let go of my body. And it was such a wonderful experience just sitting there or not so not sitting. They're laying there with legs all over the place. We've seen people in hospital with a fever. They're not really caring about just how their body is positioned. You're all over the place. But then just going deep inside away from my body, closing my eyes. It was in a a ward of a hospital. So there's lots of noise there, but I couldn't hear anything. No smell. No taste, just going inside to some nice beautiful mind state. Oh, it's just a wonderful time. And I'm really sure that that would be when the fever stopped simply because that's the nature of the mind. It's incredibly powerful and it's so powerful inside. It just stops all this stuff in your body and very happy afterwards.
- 'Please tell Julie how much I love her'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A doctor who attends the Buddhist Society told Ajahn Brahm of a dying patient (he thinks at Royal Perth) who had given a list of close family to call. The patient hadn't been…
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I don't know if that doctor is here today but one of the doctors who comes here he came up and said he had an experience of that as a doctor over in one of the hospitals. I think it was Royal Perth. One of his patients you know was dying so he went to his uh his bedside and the instructions from the patient was, "Here's a list of my close family members. Please give them a call to get me them to come immediately." So, he was calling those um family members, and he got to the guy's daughter, Julia or something. And he was calling Julia, "Come to the hospital quickly. Your father's dying." And that's when the father opened his eyes and said, "Please tell Julie how much I love her." And he closed his eyes and died. And he hadn't been able to speak for for hours beforehand. He was dying. But that last little time, he had the mind took over rather than the brain and had that lucidity. He could actually speak.
- The blister from a cold nailStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: At a public demonstration of the Cambridge psychical research society, a student is hypnotised to believe a four-inch nail on a stick is red hot. It's at room temperature. When…
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hypnotized him and they had a piece of wood with a nail on the end, very simple equipment, didn't need much to buy a nail and a piece of wood and they hypnotized this guy to believe that the nail was red-hot. It was just room temperature and they touched the nail on this man's skin, he screamed in pain because he thought it was hot, you can understand that, but to see a blister come up on his skin, that was weird
- The convict who left his body to watch footballStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A meditation student at Karnet Prison Farm tells Ajahn Brahm that as a boy of five or six, having surgery in what was then Yugoslavia, he died on the table and floated out of his…
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Oh, this one case was of this young man. There was a boy about five, six, seven years of age. He told me this story at length and he was having some operation. This was many years ago in Yugoslavia when Yugoslavia was this one country and he was having an operation and he died on the operating table and he described just how he was floating out of his body and he could see that the doctors who were operating on him were looking at the wrong place. They weren't seeing where the problem was. And so he said that's where he was like dying or was actually dead outside of his body. And then he said all he did a five or six year old boy that's how old he was. He just thought the doctors you know he couldn't speak outside of his body but just thought doctor don't look over here look over there. And immediately that's what the doctor did. And he shouted out hey here's a problem. And because they could see what the problem was that they um solved the problem and he was fine again. He he recovered. But he said to me and he told me this story. He was one of my students meditating in Caret Prison Farm many years ago. He was a a convict in the jail. And he said but he didn't really mind being a convict. He said because ever since that time he came back into his body but whenever he wanted to leave his body he could he could do the old astral traveling make up a mind-made body as we say in in Buddhism and he could leave his body. So he said whenever he wanted to watch a football match didn't matter what prison they put him in he just leave his body and go and watch. he wanted to if he wanted to go and see a a concert by someone in Perth, he didn't even need to to book tickets, he just go there in his astral body and just get, you know, front seat view. And the way he said it and all the other information he gave me, he said, "Yes, okay. I think that's pretty accurate what he was saying.