Stories about suppression
2 Buddhist wisdom stories about suppression from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Cough straight awayAnalogy · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: Simile: if you feel like coughing while meditating, cough straight away. Suppress it, and when the cough finally comes it's like a volcano going off and disturbs everybody. So…
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The simile which I've often given, if anyone here is meditating, if you feel like coughing, please cough straight away, because if you don't cough straight away, and you suppress it, when you do cough it's like a volcano going off, and you just disturb everybody.
- Three months without looking at a girlStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: One of Ajahn Chah's own stories: as a lusty 18- or 19-year-old novice in a town monastery, he resolved that for the three-month rains retreat he wouldn't look at any girl at all,…
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one of Ajahn Chah's stories was that when he was a young, lusty novice, you-know, 18, 19 years of age, with all the hormones running through him, he wanted to become a monk, but, obviously, he saw young Thai girls, and he would have lust towards them. And so for three months, during a period of what we call Rains Retreat, the time when I don't come here, Sister Vayama doesn't come here. Those of you who have been coming here for a long time know for three months we always go back into our monasteries. He was staying in a town monastery, so for three months, he decided he would not look at any girl at all. He would keep his eyes down, and not even look at anybody, thinking that that type of restraint would overcome his lust. So for three months, he refused to even look at a girl. And he said what happened, for those three months he was fine, but after his resolution was completed, the first girl he looked at he went crazy with lust.