Stories about snakes
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about snakes from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Ajahn Ganha pats the king cobraStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Ajahn Ganha ('ajan gun how'), the forest monk, meets a king cobra — the local 'one-step snake'. He raises his hand and pats it on the head, thanking it in Lao for coming to…
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a monk called Ajahn Ganha— Many of you may know him from 'Opening the Door of Your Heart'; he's the one who patted the king cobra; the king cobra came to see him in the jungle; head up, the hood out (HISSING), right in front of him— and what did this monk do? He pat the cobra on the head; thank you so much. (LAUGHTER) Now that's a monk. (LAUGHTER) Absolutely true story, no exaggeration; he did that
- The Singaporean monk, the snake book, and the witch doctorStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Singaporean monk in NE Thailand asks for the snake book — to identify the snake that just bit him. Fang marks swell; village has thrown away antivenom. A herbal 'witch doctor'…
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Singaporean monk who came to stay in Northeast Thailand. And one day apparently he came into our library in what? banana chart and just said, "Oh, can I please have a look at the snake book? It has all the different species of snake in that part of Thailand and also describes how venomous they are." And as he was given a snake book, the librarian was just not really paying too much attention. And a Singaporean monk was looking through the books and then oh my goodness. That's the one which just bit me. That's what a single point was looking at the book of snakes to try and identify the one which had just bitten him to see whether it's dangerous or not. And it was really dangerous. So the other monk looked to the poor uh Singaporean monk's leg, saw the bite marks, the two fang marks and so already starting to swell. And that's one time if you're a monk, you're allowed to run. You're supposed to run. You know, if any one of you got bitten by a snake and I was me, I would have to run. Even though that might kill me, nevertheless, you know, just to save another person's life. That's so important. So, this monk just ran into the village to get a doctor. Now, these snakes exist in Thailand, so you have to keep some antivenenom. But this village had no antivenenom. They thrown it away years ago. Cuz when this monk came back with one of the villagers on a little motorbike, he didn't come back with a doctor. Well, it was a kind of a doctor. What you usually call like a witch doctor. a poor villager who didn't have any injections. He had this special medicine, a herbal medicine which was supposed to be really really powerful. And the herbal med herbal medicine man started doing some chanting. And he put this medicine in his mouth, started chewing it, mixing it with saliva, and then spitting it on this poor Singaporean man's wound, which was getting really big by now. And this Singaporean, imagine that was you. How would you feel? This Singaporean who was highly educated looked to the other monks and said, "Can I please have a proper doctor?" But then looking at this Singaporean, now this Singaporean and this witch doctor doing chanting and spitting over the wound, you could see apparently what the other monks told me. the the two fang marks started to get smaller and smaller and smaller and the inflammation got less and less and less until the inflammation totally vanished. The two fang marks disappeared and that Singaporean mark was totally healed