Stories about offence
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about offence from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- 'Number one!'Story · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On the monks' Saturday-morning alms round in Perth, a young Australian gave Ajahn Brahm the one-finger sign. He chose not to be offended: maybe the man was really saying the…
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the last time I went on arms round, this uh young Aussie guy saw us and gave me the one finger sign. Now, they gave you know, you know, you know the one finger sign. I'm not going to demonstrate it here, otherwise you may think that I'm doing this on purpose rather than just a demonstration for um educational purposes. So, they gave me the one finger sign. So there you had a choice again to be offended or to laugh or to even see if you can perceive it in a positive way. So I looked upon that and saying what he was really saying but he just got the finger the wrong wrong way round that we were number one Buddhism is the best. So that's where you have the choice and I exercise that choice not to get offended and interpret it. I mean, it's very unlikely that that was actually the truth, but it could have been.
- The 86-year-old who pleaded guiltyJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Two old men meet in the park for lunch every day. The 86-year-old disappears for a month; when he returns he says he's been in jail. The girl who serves their coffee accused him…
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two 80 year old men and they always met every now and then in the park and they'd tell a few stories. You know, solve the problems of the world, feed the pigeons. and they became close friends and one day one of the men never turned up. His other mate, friend got very concerned that his mate never turned up. They both thought, "He's old, in his late 80s, he could get a cold or flu or something, but when he never turned up for a whole month, his friend thought he may have died. So, you can imagine just how relieved he felt when his friend turned up after one month. And he said, "I was so worried about you, I thought you died. Whatever happened to you?" And this guy said, "Well, actually I went to prison." He said, "How old are you?" He said, "I'm 89. I spent 30 days in prison." "How on earth did you end up in prison? He said, "Well, you know that beautiful young girl who serves us coffee in the cafe sometimes? She accused me of rape and when I went to court, I was so flattered, I pleaded guilty
- The bikie and the girl on the bridgeJoke · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A bikie gang, wanting good publicity, sees a crowd: a girl is about to jump off a bridge. One bikie goes up and kisses her, and everyone thinks it's a great way to stop her.…
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the bikey gang going down the highway. They saw a big crowd. The bike wanted to sort of know be a hero. Tried to sort of get some good publicity for bikes. They're not all bad. And actually, just on a side there that you know, once once there was a mother of a bikey, the poor young man, you know, he u drove a bit too fast and he slammed into a a a um electricity pole and killed himself. And he was very very young. And I knew the mother, she would come to our monastery. And so she wanted my support at the funeral for her son. and she was a a very spiritual person and she thought that she could handle doing the funeral service for for her own son and it was in Fremantle many years ago at the old little funeral um chapel now they built new chapels since that time it was small and because this was a bikey who had died they had all these bikes crammed into this little hall and I don't know why this is but you They were all in their leathers, their tats, everything, their patches, and they had their girlfriends. And their girlfriends, this was a funeral, but they were quite frankly dressed like they were going to go out to a nightclub, you know, young, you know, really well-dressed and stuff like that because this is just biky culture. They was their way of paying respect to one of their own. And the mother went up there to try and um conduct a funeral ceremony for her son. But you know it became impossible for her. She started losing it and I remember her sort of calling out there's a professional in here somewhere. Brah help. So I came and just impromptu did the funeral service for her son who I also you know met a couple of times and I remember just after the funeral service all these bikes these tough guys you know really big incredibly big arms and tough they all came up to me said thank you sir very nice funeral great service sir thank you so much they're so nice and so kind and you can see they really felt something for their you know their brother you know their friend who had passed away. And I was, you know, when you actually get to know people, they have all this bad reputation. Sometimes we judge them far too too rationally. And some of them can be really really kind. So anyway, despite what sort of people say about them, obviously there are some bad ones, but there's also some good ones. You can't judge is what I'm trying to say. But anyway, in this story, you know, the bikey tried to do something good and then this girl trying to jump off the bridge and the bikey sort of came up to the girl, kissed her and it's very quickly and everyone thought, "Great, great idea to stop her from jumping off." And then afterwards he asked why why were you wanting to jump off? And uh she or you might say he said because my parents don't like me dressing up in girls clothes and you know it was the bike was was tricked. You know he got it wrong. He mispersceived and that was a joke.