Stories about permission
5 Buddhist wisdom stories about permission from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Permission to go — peaceful funeralStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: He tells a daughter she is holding her dying mother back; she gives full permission to depart. The mother dies within 24 hours. At the Thai funeral's first rites, husband and two…
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please give your mother permission to go you have to let her go and I don't mean just half-heartedly fully go up to her and give her your blessing to depart this life because you are what's holding her back and she accepted that and understood that I was quite surprised at how easily that really got into her head into her mind and after I left she did go up to her mother talk to her and free her let her go she passed away 24 hours later and I was fortunate enough to do part of the funeral service in Thailand the funeral service is just so long and drawn out the death only takes a couple of minutes but the funerals take a 100 days there's something very wrong there but that's tradition but fortunately I went to do the first part of the funeral service and it was one of the most those was on Monday evening was one of the most wonderful times to see the closest relations the husband and the two daughters totally at peace with her mother death cuz her mother had died well had died beautifully and there wasn't tears there wasn't the sense of grief there was a sense that they let go and what a wonderful freeing experience that was for everybody
- The grumpy licenceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: On a meditation retreat a woman complains that everyone else is happy and she feels pressured to be happy. Brahm prints her a letterheaded 'grumpy licence' — permission to be…
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I wrote her out a grumpy license and it was on a letter head it was really nicely done nice font and I said this certificate gives you know to this girl permission to be grumpy for any reason or no reason whatsoever for the rest of her life s aab Bram her teacher it was a grumpy license and I've done many of those license before angry license depressed license I'll give you permission to be depressed and as soon as I gave her that grumpy license she looked at it and she laughed her head off and that was the end of her grumpiness
- The Happiness CertificateStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: For people who feel they don't deserve happiness he makes a certificate on monastery letterhead: 'This certificate grants the holder the right to be happy, for any reason or no…
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I started making this Happiness Certificate for them. Just to reinforce the idea – that this certificate is on BSWA… no, it’s on Bodhinyana monastery letterhead I think. This certificate grants the holder the right to be happy. For any reason or no reason at all. For the rest of their life. And their next lives as well. Signed ‘Ajahn Brahm’. No, I didn't ‘sign’, I said: ‘By order of Ajahn Brahm’. [Laughter] To make it a bit more assertive. Some of those actually worked. You gave it to people and they said ‘Yeah!’. The problem was, when I first did that - it was actually the retreat I was giving in… I suppose in Frankfurt. Because sometimes, people think they don't deserve the happiness, they're getting so close, but… So I gave one of these certificates out. And this fellow, he put it on the Internet. And then the next day he said ‘uhmm, can you please do another 50
- The happiness licenceStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Some years ago a person whose life was going well came to Ajahn Brahm feeling guilty about being happy. So on Bodhinyana Monastery letterhead he typed and signed a licence: 'I,…
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in fact some years ago I was counseling another person having a very good time but they felt guilty about it, so on our monastery letterhead, you know, nice letterhead, Bodhinyana Monastery Serpentine, I typed out a letter and I signed it, and it was a license. I said this is a happiness license “I, Ajahn Brahm, Spiritual Director of the Buddhist Society of Western Australia hereby grant you permission to be happy” and I signed that for her [laughs], so they could put it on their wall
- The Rhodes scholar given permission to dieStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A fit Tennessee wrestler and Rhodes scholar, a fellow monk in Thailand, fell desperately ill and was sent to a monastery in England, where he stayed in his room for two or three…
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like this young roads scholar who I grew up with in Thailand. He was so fit and so smart and he was like a wrestler but also uh road scholar means you go to Oxford University. Really smart fellow but when he was in Thailand he got really really sick very close to death. We sent him over to a monastery in England thinking that might be of service to him help him but he just was in his room for about two or three years without being able to get out of his room. And one day one of the monks went up there and said to him, "On behalf of all the people who've been looking after you all these years, all the people who care about you and love for you, I've come up here on the behalf of everybody to give you permission to die. Stop trying to get healthy. Stop trying to please others by trying this and trying that to get rid of the sickness." Not that this roads scholar, he's a champion wrestler over in he was he was from the I think from Tennessee. He used to speak this wonderful South American draw as a monk. South uh yeah southern states of America draw and a very nice fellow and he just wept. He'd been trying so hard to get better that literally was causing him to be sick. From that day on, he started to improve in his health. That was so many years ago, maybe 35 years ago, he's still alive. Once he got permission to die, he kept on living.