Stories about poverty
6 Buddhist wisdom stories about poverty from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Hopeful a burglar might leave us somethingStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In a tiny London council flat, young Brahm asks why they don't lock the door. Father: not afraid of burglars — hopeful one might take pity and leave something.
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why don't we lock the door when we go out aren't you afraid of burglars?" You know what my father said, he said: "No, I'm not afraid of burglars in fact I'm quite hopeful a burglar might come in take pity on us and leave us something."
- The bucket with so many holesStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Coming from Cambridge to subsistence villages in northeast Thailand, Ajahn Brahm is shocked at how happy people are eating frogs and snails. Years later a villager tells him that…
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And I remember seeing an example of that living in this poor part of Thailand, you know, which had no roads, no electricity. But you know, there's this great sense of happiness in those villages. That's one of the great shocks to me coming from a rich country and having spent 3 years in this elite university where people would actually call you young gentleman. And if you looked at me at the time, that would be a stretch of everybody's imagination to call me a young gentleman the way I behaved in those days. But that we had to be called that. And it is awkward in Cambridge. It's really a weird place. But you come from that place where you could have dinner, you know, with a Nobel laureate or just to play soccer with an earl and all that sort of stuff. And they were actually hopeless at soccer, by the way. But and you went from there to the villages of northeast Thailand of subsistence farming, you know, as I had mentioned before, eating frogs and snails and all this other stuff. Whatever crawled on the floor went into your curry. And seeing that people were so happy. That was one of the weirdest surprises to see that people in these villages had far more happiness than anyone I'd ever seen in those great colleges or this, you know, developed society like UK. It made me challenge, I mean, why are all these aid organizations pouring millions into northeast Thailand making them suffer just like us? And actually that is actually what happened. And I saw it in my own eyes. They saw that I remember cuz I cuz fluent in sort of Thai and now and you would speak to people and I remember this one guy I saw after maybe 20 years I'd been there. And he said, "You know, when we you first came here, yeah, we didn't have very much, but you know, we had enough to get by. We had enough food. No, not the best food, but enough." He said, "Now it's just like having a bucket with so many holes. You know, I get money for all these things. But the more water I put in my bucket, the more holes there are. They just keeps on dripping out and I can never fill my bucket anymore." He said, "That's just all these things I now have to pay for electricity, for television, for medical insurance and blah blah blah." And he says, "In the old days, life was so simple and so happy." And I remember this other guy. He was one of Ajahn Chah's chief disciples.
- The Dalai Lama accepted the poor woman's skirtStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Early story: dirt-poor woman offers the Dalai Lama an egg-stained/skirt gift; he accepts because she needed to give — wisdom of receiving so others can give.
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Dalai Lama years and years and years ago. This is one of those stories I I read, you know, the very beginning of my Buddhist life. And it was something which really moved me. It made me understand a little about what compassion is really about cuz this was before the Dalai Lama actually uh left Tibet. you know, he's obviously a famous young man at that time and he would go from village to village visiting the people in Tibet and there was a journalist from United States was accompanying him doing one of the very first stories you know on the Dalai Lama and as he was going from village to village people were lining up to offer him gifts you know it's supposed to be good karma to offer someone like the Dalai Lama some gifts But this was an American who didn't really understand what generosity, compassion was about. And so he started to get more and more upset because some of those gifts were coming from very, very poor people. And on this one occasion in this one village, there was a woman who was obviously dirt poor, you know, hardly had anything. You could see by her eggs. And she lined up and when it came to her turn, she presented his holy Mr. Dalai Lama with one of her skirts. Her best skirt is what she gave to the Dalai Lama. And that American, he just could not contain his anger and disgust any longer. He shouted, "What are you doing?" Now, I don't sh If I got a cough, I'll really mess up my throat. But you can imagine what he would say. What are you doing now? Accepting a skirt from that poor white woman. You're so wealthy. You live in this great monastery. You have everything you want. And you don't need a skirt. You're a man. What do you want with a skirt? She needs it more than you. Shouldn't accept it. What are you doing that for? That's not right. And he had a point in there. When I thought that I read that, I thought, my goodness, what does a monk need with a woman's skirt? But then, you know, whenever you get someone gets angry at you or shouts at you, this is the way to react. You know, you're very quiet and soft. You take it first of all and that's a very good way of disarming other people's anger by not giving anger back. You just sit there quietly silently cuz if you give anger back you just feed you know the other person's ill will. So you see this very often in you know great people they someone shouts at you but you just sit there stand there quietly and wait and when they're finished then you can say something what the Dal Lama said he said it's true I don't need this skirt but that woman needed to give it to me
- The pound note that blew into the fireStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: In his poor London childhood, a gust blows his father's one-pound note off the shelf into the coal fire; his father burns his hand trying to save it and his mother weeps — it was…
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that I would do remember once that there must have been at nine or ten or eleven that my we were Legitimately poor because my father put a 1 pound note on this shelf above the coal fire They didn't have electric fires just have coal now to keep you warm during the really freezing winters and This mother was sitting down their kids were myself and my brother doing homework or something I don't know how this happened, but a gust of air Just took that one pound note and it fell into the fireplace and started burning And my father just tried to get it out. He burned his hand and my mother's just started crying. Oh weeping That was so much for them
- The schoolboy who stopped skipping the bus fareStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Poor schoolboy skips bus fares for pocket money until about 13–14; conscience says someone must pay the driver's salary and the petrol — he stops cheating.
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when I was a a young uh school boy now my parents were very poor so I didn't have much money and I had to go on a bus every morning to school and a bus coming back again and I thought that if the buzz conductor never asked for your fair I didn't need to pay it and that was an extra source of income for me and but there came a time when I was about 13 or 14 I felt very bad about that you know something inside of me said that was wrong and it was like this intuitive feeling of what was right and wrong no one was telling me all my friends were doing the same but then I thought no that know somebody's got to pay this bus driver's uh salary someone's got to pay for the petrol
- The trail of blood into Mum's council flatStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Staying at his mother's London council tower block (a supposed 'hotbed of crime'), Ajahn Brahm is about to walk to a talk when the lift opens on an elderly neighbour covered in…
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I remember when I went to visit her and stayed in that tower block for a short while I was going to give a talk in the Sri Lankan Vihara is Chiswick one day and it was not that far from where my mother lived so I wanted to walk. I enjoyed those walks in the streets of London especially in my robes. Because I was always a radical I wanted to surprise and stagger and confront people with my sartorial elegance of brown robes. But I also enjoyed having fun because people would look at me and sometimes not knowing exactly what you were dressed in these robes, these are like what people used to called bed blankets sometimes they are cross the other side of the road but I'll always take pleasure in wishing them Good Morning with a smile to an Englishman when someone actually wishes you 'Good Morning' you have to say Good Morning back. It is psychological torture for them. Being a sadist I enjoyed that. But anyhow on this particular occasion when I in the elevator when I got to the bottom as the door was open I was the only one in the elevator and as the door was opened I was confronted by an old lady who was covered with blood. It was like scene out of a movie I didn't know what had happened to her whether she has been attacked, mugged or whatever but she actually told me that she had fallen down by the flight of steps. She must have been about sixty five or seventy because she could still stand so immediately I forgot about giving a talk at any sort of Vihara it's more important I am kind and compassion; I like to practice Buddhism rather than teach it. So I forgot about the talk and I took this old lady upstairs to my mother's apartment where we bathed her wounds called the ambulance, she did have a broken leg but because of the shock she couldn't feel the pain at the time, so we bathed her, comforted her, called the ambulance but the wonderful thing which happened was that because it was an accident and because I took her into my mother's apartment very quickly, my mother left the door opened and there was a trail of blood which was leading into my mother's apartment and I was so pleased in a matter of five minutes I don't know how many people had come into my mother's apartment to find out what was going on and whether she was alright. And when they found out the reason why one of the tenants in these apartment blocks had an accident, fallen over and was wounded, it was wonderful to see the community coming together and helping one and another I was bathing the wounds because my mother doesn't like blood someone else was going to her house to actually to turn her oven off because she had something in the oven cooking and somebody was going to ring her daughter somewhere else and everybody was working together so well I thought, this is not a hot bed of crime this is a community where people cared about each other.