Who Ordered this Truckload of Dung?

I was just listening to a talk by one of my favorite Buddhist teachers, Ajahn Brahm.  Ajahn Brahm is a UK-born monk of the Thai Forest tradition who lives in a monastery near Perth, Australia. 

During the talk, Ajahn Brahm told his well-known parable about the truck of dung arriving at your door. I cried when I listened to the story, it resonated with me so strongly. So, I thought I'd transcribe it for you all. Enjoy!

(Warning: there are a few swear words in the story...)

Who ordered this truck-load of dung?

Life is like this.  You’re sitting in your monastery, or you’re sitting at home or in your office, and then someone delivers you a whole truckload of shit.  It’s right in front of your house or office. 

There are two things about this delivery of shit in your life.  The most important thing is, you did not order it.  Life is like that.  ‘Why me?’ you say. You didn’t deserve it, this thing just happened to you.  You didn’t order it and you’re not responsible for it.  

But, the second thing is that no-one saw it coming so you can’t ring up someone and get them to take it away.  You’re stuck with it.  So the first thing is that these things can happen and no-ones to blame.  And the second thing is that you’re stuck with it. 

But, there’s something you can do with the dung. You can find the nearest garden, and dig it in.  It takes a lot of hard work to dig in the suffering, the disappointments, the diseases, the tragedies of life. But you’ve got no choice.  

Actually you have got a choice, because what many people do with the dung of their life is to put it in their pockets.  They put it in their handbag, they shove it up their shirt; they carry it around with them.  You lose a lot of friends if you carry around shit. So, you should dig it in your garden. It’s hard work – maybe you only do half a bucket or one bucket a day, but you dig it in. 

And after a while, we call it the miracle, the miracle of Dhamma (of truth).  The miracle is that after a while the dung has disappeared and in its place you have the most magnificent garden.  It’s the garden of wisdom, of courage, of compassion. Not just the kindness and compassion you get from books – but the kindness and compassion you get by embracing, understanding and digging in your problems.  

This is the garden of the heart. 

Drinking tea when there's no way out

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia.

I’ve been reading a book of stories by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Opening the Door of Your Heart (previously published as ‘Who ordered this truck-load of dung?’).

It’s a lovely book, full of short stories, some of them re-telling Buddhist fables and tales and others recollections from Ajahn Brahm’s life.  The chapters are all very short, and the whole book is alive with warmth and humour. I think it's well-suited to people who have an illness and might have trouble concentrating or reading.

I found one of the stories particularly moving and enlightening.  It's the story of a man who’d been in the British Army in World War 2 (and later met Ajahn Brahm). The man had been on patrol in the Burmese jungle when the scout from his patrol returned to tell the captain that somehow they’d stumbled into the middle of a large number of Japanese soldiers. They were surrounded, with no way to move out. The patrol expected to be ordered to advance, and even if none of them survived at least they might be able to kill some of the enemy. 

But instead, the captain told his men to stay where they were, sit down, and have a cup of tea. The man who told the story to Ajahn Brahm said that they all thought the captain had gone mad. But, they were in the army and they had to obey him.

“They all made what they thought was to be their last cup of tea.  Before they had finished drinking their tea, the scout came back and whispered to his captain. The captain asked for the men’s attention. ‘The enemy has moved,’ he announced. ‘There is now a way out. Pack your kit quickly, and quietly – let’s go!”

The man told Ajahn Brahm that he felt like he owed his life to his captain, and not just for saving him in Burma. 

“Several times in his life, it was as if he was surrounded by the enemy, completely outnumbered, with no way out and about to die.  He meant by ‘the enemy’ serious illness, horrendous difficulty and tragedy, in the middle of which there seemed no way out. Without the experience in Burma he would have tried to fight his way through the problem, and no doubt made it much worse. But instead...he simply sat down and made a cup of tea.”

After reading this story I put the book down and lay there for a while, just listening to the sounds of the Australian bush on a summer’s night – the crickets, and the rustling of the gum trees outside my caravan. In my mind I saw an image of me, surrounded by my enemies of fatigue, pain, despair, fear and depression.  I saw them all around, surrounding me in the dark night, lurking in the trees and bushes outside my caravan.

What was my inclination?  Was it to sit and have a cup of tea?  Or, was it to hurl myself headlong at these enemies – hoping to fight my way through and emerge at the other side, wounded but alive?

Of course, it was the latter.  But, for the first time in my life I could see that there was another option.  I didn’t have to throw myself on my enemies and wrestle them to the ground in an adrenalin-pumped fight to the death.  I could just sit, have a drink, and say, ‘who knows?...let’s wait.’ 

I started making a little meditation around this.  I allowed the difficult feelings to arise, and imagined myself sitting down, drinking a cup of tea, and shrugging my shoulders...just waiting.  This was a completely new way of relating to these feelings. Immediately I could feel the some of the huge responsibility I’d taken for all these ‘enemies’ slip away.  They were still there – but it seemed they weren't totally my fault, and totally my responsibility to fix. I saw that it wasn’t my job to destroy myself fighting them. I could be aware of them, without blaming myself so much for them being there.

Often people with an illness are encouraged not to 'play the victim.' We're encouraged instead to take responsibility for our situation, to heal our own bodies, to investigate why we have 'dis-ease.'  In itself, this isn’t a bad thing, but I wonder sometimes whether the pendulum has slipped a little too far one way and whether we are being urged to take on too much responsibility for what is happening to our bodies. Ajahn Brahm’s story made me realise I’ve taken on far too much responsibility for my illness. It has been a profound realisation, and one that I know I’ll be working with, and deepening, over the next weeks and months.   

 

One of the huts at Santi Forest Monastery

My Breath and I, We’re the Best of Mates

This post was written in December 2009, when I was spending a month staying at a Buddhist monastery near Sydney, Australia. 

Last night, after an intense meditation where I was feeling a lot of tension and resistance in my mind and body, I went up to the monastery library to see if I could find anything helpful to read.  I really felt completely stuck – I could observe the tension, the fighting, the utter dislike of my own thoughts and experience – but I couldn’t find any way of working with them.  Every ‘technique’ I tried just left me feeling more and more stuck. 

I found a book by the Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm called Mindfulness, Bliss, and Beyond. Ajahn Brahm was born in the UK, but for many years has been the Abbot of a monastery in Australia.  (He’s currently in the news for controversially ordaining women, and being kicked out of the Thai lineage his monastery  belonged to...but that’s another story).

Often when I go searching for something in a book that will help me during my ‘stuck’ periods I find nothing, but this time I found a really beautiful section on relating to meditation in a friendly, relaxed, way.  It was exactly what I needed to read.  Here’s the section – may you find it useful too.

‘I love meditation.  I enjoy it so much...Meditation is like a dear old friend that you want to spend time with...as for the meditation object, the breath, we’ve had such a good time together, my breath and I. We’re the best of mates...The opposite of course, is when you know you have to be with that friggin breath and you don’t like it...you see it coming along the other side of the street and you think, ‘Oh my God, here it is again.’

I use the following method to overcome any ill will toward my breath.  I look upon my breath like a newborn son or daughter.  Would you leave your baby at the shopping mall and just forget it?  Would you drop it as you’re walking on the road? If you appreciated your breath as much as your child or someone else who is very, very dear to you and very vulnerable, you would never drop, forget, or abandon it. ...When you have loving-kindness towards the meditation object you do not need much effort to hold it.’

I just love Ajahn Brahm’s happy, uncomplicated, joyful view of meditation.  After I read this I realised how much I see meditation as a chore; ‘I’m sick, and I’ve obviously done something wrong to be given this illness, so now I’ve got to do all this awful, boring, hard work to get better.’  I usually feel like I’m trudging along a long road with a heavy load.  Reading Ajahn Brahm’s book is a good reminder to me to take things a little more lightly – and a lot more kindly.

                                                                       Ajahn Brahm