Sharing below one of the sessions that you have missed on Ajahn Brahm's talk:-
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Some people think that whatever happens to us, especially the bad ones were due to karmic causes. According to Ajahn, the Buddha specifically said that whatever bad things that happens to us today is not always due to our karma of past lives. Because if it was, we cannot remember our past lives. So how can one make the connection to some acts we did previously for what we are being punished today. We can ask, why did this happen? But the more important question is, what we are going to do about it? The whole point of karma is to recognize how our actions determine our future, so that we can begin to act properly. It’s not just a cosmological or philosophical matter. It’s entirely practical. The main point is not to get in trouble again. Ajahn explained that most bad things that happens in life in fact is “part of our contract in life”. Being born as a human being, it is as though we have signed this contract..and if only we can read the contract before we are born, we probably would see the fine prints in the bottom of the contract that states, “you can get disabled by a brain tumor, by cancer, by falling down from a building and etc..”. It’s going to be part of our life that those things will happen to some of us. Life is uncertain but death is certain. In explaining why some people die young; Ajahn Brahmn shared the below story of ‘Falling Leaves’ his famous parable on the nature of death. One evening, a simple forest monk was meditating alone in the jungle in a hut made of thatch when there was a very violent monsoon storm. The wind roared like a jet aircraft and heavy rain thrashed against the hut. That was a fierce storm, a tree came crashing down and it was so loud and so dangerous that the poor monk can’t sleep all night. The monk soon realized that the grass hut was of no protection. If a tree fell on top of the hut, or even a big branch, it would break clean through the grass roof and crush him to death. He didn’t sleep the whole night. Often during that night, he would hear huge forest giants smash their way to the ground and his heart would pound for awhile. In the hours before dawn, as so often happens, the storm disappeared. At first light, the monk ventured outside the grass hut to inspect the damage. Many big branches, as well as two sizeable trees, had just missed the hut. He felt lucky to have survived. What suddenly took his attention though was not the many uprooted trees and fallen branches scattered on the ground, but the many leaves that now lay spread thickly on the forest floor. As he expected, most of the leaves lying dead on the ground were old, brown leaves, which had lived a full life. Among the brown leaves were many yellow leaves. There were even several green leaves. And some of those green leaves were of such a fresh and rich green that he knew they could have only unfurled from the bud a few hours before. In that moment, the monk’s heart understood the nature of death. He wanted to test the truth of his insight so he gazed up to the branches of the trees. Sure enough, most of the leaves still left on the trees were young, healthy green ones in the prime of their life. Yet although many newborn green leaves lay dead on the ground, some old, bent and curled up brown leaves still clung on to the branches. When the storms of death blow through our families, they usually take the old ones, the mottled brown leaves. They also take many middle-aged ones, like the yellow leaves of a tree. Young people die too, in the prime of their life, similar to the green leaves, and sometimes death rips from dear life a small number of young children, just as nature’s storms rip off a small number of young shoots. This is the essential nature of death in our communities, as it is the essential nature of storms in a forest. There is no-one to blame and no-one to lay guilt on. It is not something that has gone wrong. This is the nature of things. Who can blame the storm? However, this helps to answer the question of why bad things happen to good people. We need to contemplate death in the same way. Life is a death sentence. We are all on death row the moment we are born into this world. We don't know how the execution is going to take place, and we don't know exactly when. But the fact that we will die one day is certain. We need to learn how to reap the happiness from the simplest event we experience today. Most of these events that take place in our life are the messenger of truth and it teaches us how to live our life. Instead of feeling upset, we should ask ourselves, “is it really a bad thing?” Ajahn Brahm went on to give us a “King and His Doctor” story to explain that sometimes, bad things that happened in our lives can be a blessing in disguise. In old India, there lived a King who loves hunting.One day, he went hunting with his great Doctor. While hunting, the King was pricked by a strange plant on his middle finger. The finger became swollen and painful. The doctor applied a special ointment to the wound and bandage the King's finger. The King then asked: "Will my finger be alright?" The Doctor answered: "Good or bad who knows?" A few days passed and the King's finger became worse. He summoned the doctor and asked: "Will my finger be alright?" The Doctor answered: "Good or bad who knows?" 3 days later, the King's finger was badly infected and has to be amputated from his hand. The King was furious and ordered the doctor to be jailed and hang in a month's time. Meanwhile, after a week's of recovery, the King went hunting again. This time he was more unfortunate. He was capture by a cannibal tribe. Before the tribe can burn him as a human sacrifice, the priest noticed he had only 9 fingers. It was the tribe's believe that only a person with full and perfect body can be use as sacrifice. So they released the King. Back to the Kingdom, the King immediately ordered the release of the doctor. The doctor was summoned to the King. The King said: "Great doctor, because of you, I lost my finger but in turn, it saves my life." The Doctor said: "Good or bad..I know. Great King, if not because of you putting me in jail and thus I cannot go hunting with you. If not, I would have been captured by the tribe and used as the sacrifice. Thank you..you save my life!” "What is Good? What is Bad?" According to Ajahn tragedy itself is an opportunity that teaches us to become kinder and wiser. Unpleasant things happen in life and they happen to everyone. The only difference between a happy person and one who gets depressed is how they respond to disasters.
Ajahn related a true story about a victim of violent rape came up to him for counseling. He gave this story of ‘Digging the dung” as a parable to explain that we can turn pain and suffering by growing our inner self into a beautiful garden:
Imagine you have just had a wonderful afternoon at the beach with a friend. When you return home, you find a huge truckload of dung has been dumped right in front of your door. There are three things to know about this truckload of dung:
1. You did not order it. It's not your fault. 2. You're stuck with it. No one saw who dumped it, so you cannot call anyone to take it away. 3. It is filthy and offensive, and its stench fills your whole house. It is almost impossible to endure. In this metaphor, the truckload of dung in front of the house stands for the traumatic experiences that are dumped on us in life. As with the truckload of dung, there are three things to know about tragedy in our life: 1. We did not order it. We say 'Why me?' 2. We're stuck with it. No one, not even our best friends, can take it away (though they may try). 3. It is so awful, such a destroyer of our happiness, and its pain fills our whole life. It is almost impossible to endure.
There are two ways of responding to being stuck with a truckload of dung. The first way is to carry the dung around with us. We put some in our pockets, some in our bags, and some up our shirts. We even put some down our pants and it stinks like hell. Eventually we find when we carry those dung around, we tend to lose a lot of friends! Even best friends don't seem to be around so often.
'Carrying around the dung' is a metaphor for sinking into depression, negativity, or anger. It is a natural and understandable response to adversity. But we lose a lot of friends, because it is also natural and understandable that our friends don't like being around us when we're so depressed. Moreover, the pile of dung gets no less, but the smell gets worse as it ripens.
Fortunately, there's a second way. When we are dumped with a truckload of dung, we heave a sigh, and then get down to work. Out come the wheelbarrow, the fork, and the spade. We fork the dung into the barrow, wheel it around the back of the house, and dig it into the garden. This is tiring and difficult work, but we know there's no other option. Sometimes, all we can manage is half a barrow a day. We're doing something about the problem, rather than complaining our way into depression. Day after day we dig in the dung. Day after day, the pile gets smaller. Sometimes it takes several years, but the morning does come when we see that the dung in front of our house is all gone. Furthermore, a miracle has happened in another part of our house. The flowers in our garden are bursting out in a richness of colour all over the place. Their fragrance wafts down the street so that the neighbours, and even passers-by, smile in delight. Then the fruit tree in the corner is nearly falling over, it's so heavy with fruit. And the fruit is so sweet; you can't buy anything like it. There's so much of it that we are able to share it with our neighbours. Even passers-by get a delicious taste of the miracle fruit.
'Digging in the dung' is a metaphor for welcoming the tragedies as fertilizer for life. It is work that we have to do alone: no one can help us here. But by digging it into the garden of our heart, day by day, the pile of pain gets less. It may take us several years, but the morning does come when we see no more pain in our life and, in our heart, a miracle has happened. Flowers of kindness are bursting out all over the place, and the fragrance of love wafts way down our street, to our neighbours, to our relations, and even to passers-by. Then our wisdom tree in the corner is bending down to us, loaded with sweet insights into the nature of life. We share those delicious fruits freely, even with the passers-by, without ever planning to.
When we have known tragic pain, learnt its lesson, and grown our garden, then we can put our arms around another in deep tragedy and say, softly, 'I know.' They realize we do understand. Compassion begins. We show them the wheelbarrow, the fork, and the spade, and boundless encouragement. If we haven't grown our own garden yet, this can't be done.
According to Ajahn, he has seemed many monks who are skilled in meditation, who are peaceful, composed and serene in adversity. But only a few have become great teachers and he often wondered why.
It seems to him now that those monks who had a relatively easy time of it, who had little dung to dig in, were the ones who didn't become teachers. It was the monks who had the enormous difficulties, dug them in quietly, and came through with a rich garden that became great teachers. They all had wisdom, serenity and compassion; but those with more dung had more to share with the world.
Perhaps the moral of this story is that if you want to be of service to the world, if you wish to follow the path of compassion, then the next time a tragedy occurs in your life, you may say, 'Whoopee! More fertilizer for my garden!' Cheers! Merry Xmas |
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