Stories about self-punishment
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about self-punishment from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Fifty strokes of the catStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A new postulant confesses to secretly making an afternoon sandwich and, refusing Ajahn Brahm's gentle advice, insists on a penance or he'll do it again. Fresh from reading 'The…
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is a story many years ago of one of the anagarikas one of the people in white who's trained to be a monk at Bodhinyana Monastery in Serpentine. When you become a monk you have to train for a minimum of two years beforehand, one year wearing white keeping eight precepts, the next year in brown keeping ten precepts, and afterwards after two years maybe you can ordained as a full monk. There was one young man, an Australian man who was starting his training as an anagarika, eight precepts. One of those precepts is you're not allowed to eat any solid food from noon until the dawn the following day, you can't eat in the afternoon or night time. So I was the abbot, one afternoon this new anagarika, a young man, came up to me and said, "I have something to confess, I've done a terrible crime. I know you're gonna probably throw me out of the monastery and not let me be a monk, because one afternoon I was hungry, I went into the kitchen with no one seeing me and made myself a sandwich." [laughter] And to him it was like some capital offense. And so what did I do? I told him, I said, "It doesn't matter, thank you for letting me know, now maybe eat some more food at lunchtime, you know before lunch when we have our meal, eat some more so you won't be hungry in the afternoon. If you are hungry you can have some cup of tea with some sugar, some fruit juice or some chocolate, so you don't have to eat in the afternoon. So it was a mistake, you admit it, have some strategies in place so it doesn't happen again. Okay, you can go now." This young man looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, that's not good enough." [laughter] He said, "If you don't punish me I will do it again." [laughter] "I need a penance." Because he knew himself, he spent all his life only being trained by punishment. He said, "If you let me go like that I'm sure one day I will do it again." So I had to think very quickly of a solution to that problem. As it was, I'd been reading a book, a very well-known Australian book called "Fatal Shore" by Robert Hughes, which was telling the early history of Australia. I got to that point about the convicts who were here in Australia, and the harsh punishments meted out to them. So I looked at that young man in white clothes with a bald head and I said, "If you want a punishment I will give you a traditional Australian penance... "50 strokes of the cat." This young man, his face went whiter than the clothes he was wearing. 'Cause he didn't know too much about Buddhism and he thought, "Oh, my god, Ajahn Brahm is gonna whip me, he's gonna lash me." [laughs] But then I told him what "50 strokes of the cat" means in a Buddhist monastery. We have three cats in our monastery, choose whichever one you want and stroke it 50 times, "there cat, there pussy ... three, four." Learn some compassion and kindness 'cause that's the only thing which will overcome your need for punishment and pain. It's because you don't know kindness and compassion that you think that fear is the only way to train you. I said, "We don't do fear, we do compassion and kindness."
- Penance: a carrot for the rabbitStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A postulant who broke a minor precept is very upset with himself and asks for a penance. Ajahn Brahm tells him to take a carrot from the kitchen to the hungry wild rabbit…
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a beautiful little wild rabbit at our Jhana Grove retreat centre turned up a few days ago. And one of the Anagarika's broken a little precept. And he's really upset about himself. And so I said, I'll give you a penance. So what's the penance? What do I have to do? There's a, there's a hungry rabbit over in Jhana Grove, go and take a carrot from the kitchen and go and give it to the rabbit. It's a wonderful little thing, a little wild rabbit is just hiding there. Because it's really hot in the forest. Next to the wall by the Japanese garden, those of you who know Jhana Grove, he's just been hanging out there to get away from the heat of the forest. And so just go out to him and just give him a carrot. And it's just so cute. And you know, even if you're a multiple murderer, it will soften you just seeing a little rabbit, just twitching its little face, and smelling the rabbit and then really getting into it. And apparently, he eats it really fast. It's a very guzzly rabbit.