Don't Worry Be Grumpy Page 5

  The parents smiled as they said, “Yes, of course.” They had understood the metaphor.

  Their son does not get denied a happy rebirth solely because of his suicide, no more than a student is denied a place at university solely because he gave a wrong answer to the last question on the exam. Their son was a very kind, good boy. He had given so many excellent answers to the tests of life that he well deserved a happy rebirth.

  31. The Benefits of Being Blown Up

  I travel in planes a lot—so frequently that many of my friends worry for my safety. Planes are a prime target for terrorists, and the more I step on a plane, the more likely a suicide bomber will blow me up.

  In order to reassure my friends, I recount the three benefits of dying in an aircraft explosion at thirty thousand feet:

  1.Instant cremation. If you have ever had to organize the funeral of a close relation, you will know how much work it is. You have to organize the funeral company, select the coffin, inform all the friends and relatives, take time off work for the ceremony, and, usually, feed your guests afterward. But if your grandma, for example, dies in a bomb explosion in mid flight, everything is taken care of. No need for funeral directors, coffins, or taking time off work. Even the scattering of the ashes is taken care of. This is the first benefit: an instant and worry-free cremation.

  2.Cost-effective outcome. Funeral services, as they say, cost an arm and a leg (and the rest of the body for the one in the box). The relatives organizing the rites, understandably, cannot bring themselves to arrange a cut-price, special-offer-for-this-week-only funeral for dear old grandma. But if grandma died in an aircraft terrorist attack, not only would there be no funeral expenses, but the relations would get a substantial insurance payout from the airline company as well. At the end of the day, they would come out ahead from granny’s demise.

  3.Fortunate next life. The best benefit is the last. If grandma expires in an aircraft explosion at thirty thousand feet, she passes away so close to heaven that it is fairly easy for her to go the rest of the way.

  These are the reasons I’m not at all afraid of flying. It’s another example of overcoming anxiety with positive thinking.

  32. Should I? Shouldn’t I?

  At the end of my lecture in Oslo, a young woman I had never seen before asked me a question on how one should make important decisions in life.

  In order to ground her question in reality, I replied, “Well, suppose someone were trying to decide whether to marry her boyfriend?”

  The poor girl blushed bright red, held her head in her hands, and turned in extreme embarrassment to her boyfriend sitting next to her! The audience didn’t help by their bursting into laughter.

  After apologizing, I introduced an old method for making decisions with an unexpected new meaning: Toss a coin! Heads I marry him. Tails I don’t.

  The new meaning, which I had only heard of recently, comes from paying close attention to your emotional reaction at the result.

  Suppose it comes up heads, meaning, “I marry him.” Do you react with a “Yeah!” and grin happily or with “Hmm! Maybe I’ll try two out of three” and frown with disappointment? The reaction tells you very clearly what you really want to do. Whatever that is, you follow it.

  Tossing a coin is simply a very effective way of finding out what your heart is telling you.

  33. Ask Your Dog

  We love our pets very much. So one of the hardest decisions a pet owner will one day have to make comes when the veterinarian asks for approval to euthanize a sick pet.

  Consenting to killing a well-loved pet seems heartless, and for a Buddhist, it breaks a core moral precept. Yet preventing the vet from ending your pet’s suffering appears even more cruel. How do we solve this moral dilemma?

  Easy. Ask the dog!

  Judy took her cancer-stricken dog to the vet yet again. The doctor said that there was nothing more he could do except to give the suffering dog the final needle. Judy asked for a few moments alone with her dear little dog. Many times she had heard me give the advice to “ask the dog.” So she cradled her cherished companion in her arms, looked deep into her eyes, and asked, “Do you want to die now? Have you had enough of this cancer? Or would you like to continue on a little longer?”

  When you have lived with a pet for a long time and formed a loving relationship, you will know what the pet wants. Judy felt very strongly that her trusting little dog did not want her life ended yet. So she told the vet “no.”

  The vet became angry. “You Buddhists are so cruel and stupid!” But there was nothing the vet could do. Judy took her dog home.

  A few months later, Judy took the same little dog back to visit the vet. It had made a full recovery all on its own. Even cancers in humans vanish unexpectedly sometimes. The vet was amazed and, after checking the dog thoroughly to confirm it really was in good health, said, “You Buddhists are so compassionate and wise!”

  It is not our duty to decide on the life or death of another, not even of an animal. Our role is to ask our pet. Any loving owner will know the answer once it has been asked. Then we convey that message to the vet. It is your dog’s decision, or your cat’s, not yours. They know.

  34. Caring, Not Curing

  I have been living in Perth as a monk since 1983. Over those years, I have gained the trust and respect of the local Buddhist families to the point where I am regarded as a sort of honorary grandpa to many young men and women. They have grown up coming to my temple and feel comfortable sharing secrets with me that they would never tell their parents!

  Such a one was the distressed young doctor who came to see me. He had recently begun work as an intern in one of the big hospitals in Perth. The previous day he had lost his first patient in tragic circumstances. A young female patient of his had died. He had to tell her inconsolable husband that his young wife was dead and that his two small kids have no mum any more. The new doctor felt so guilty that he had failed that young family.

  Of course, he was not to blame. He had done everything for his patient that was medically possible. The reason why he felt he had failed was due to something else, and that is what I spoke to him about.

  “If you believe that your duty as a doctor is to cure your patient, then you are going to suffer this same failure again and again. During your career, many of your patients will die. But if you accept that your main duty is to care for your patients, then you never need to fail. Even though you may not be able to cure them, you will always be able to care for them.”

  As he was an intelligent young man, he understood immediately and soon became a much better doctor. His main goal became to care for his patients. If his patients were cured, that was a wonderful bonus, but if they died, then they passed away in the warmth of being cared for.

  Many of the appalling medical interventions that health professionals inflict on their patients, desperately trying to keep them alive when death is inevitable, occur because our society values curing above caring. Not only would many people’s last moments be more comfortable and peaceful if we emphasized caring more than curing, I think that more patients would be cured as well!

  35. Milk and Cookies

  A senior surgeon in a prestigious American hospital examined the referred woman’s medical record. Her cancer was advanced, and every other hospital in the region had given up on her. Any treatment would be complex, expensive, and there was only a small chance that she would survive. Having checked her details, and after making a few more inquiries, he took on the difficult case.

  His fellow doctors were surprised at the amount of resources he was willing to commit to the treatment of this woman. He called in many favors in order to assemble top specialists from other parts of the country and dedicated so much of his limited time and energy to helping this one patient.

  The doctor’s extraordinary efforts paid off. At the end of many months, he could tell her that the cancer was in full remission and that she could expect to live many more happy years. She was overjoyed.


  A few days later, she received the bill from the hospital in the mail. She opened the envelope with dread, expecting to see a fee for many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Instead, she saw in her doctor’s own handwriting:

  Paid twenty-five years ago with a glass of milk and two cookies.

  Twenty-five years previously, that doctor had been a poor medical student, trying to pay his way through college doing odd jobs. One such job was as a door-to-door salesman. Late one hot afternoon, having sold nothing all day, he knocked on yet another door and a woman opened it. She listened to his worn sales pitch and declined to buy anything. But then she asked the tired looking young man, “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

  “Not since breakfast, ma’am.”

  “Then just you wait here,” she said, and she quickly returned with a glass of milk and two cookies for the exhausted young med student.

  Twenty-five years later, that student was a senior surgeon at a prestigious hospital. When he examined the woman’s medical record, her name rang a bell. A few phone calls confirmed that she was indeed the kind lady who had given him the welcome snack.

  Out of gratitude for a little act of kindness many years before, never forgotten, not only did he go the extra distance to make sure she survived the cancer, but he also paid her bill.

  36. The Guilt of a Salesman

  When I was a student, and my hair was much, much longer than it is today, I also took odd jobs during the university holidays to make ends meet. One such job was selling children’s encyclopedias door to door.

  First I had to learn the marketing pitch. It was a short speech that I had to memorize, which argued persuasively that not to purchase this amazing source of knowledge would be to deny a proper education to your dear child. I was instructed to use psychological pressure to make the parents feel almost as guilty as child abusers if they irresponsibly chose not buy this magnificent set of educational books.

  Such a hard sell was immoral. I knew it. But I was young and desperate.

  The first day, I sold a set to this sweet young couple who had recently moved in to a new house with their two very young children. That night I did not sleep well at all. I kept thinking of those young parents saddled with another bill to pay because I sold them this stupid, rubbish encyclopedia. I felt so guilty that I resigned the next morning.

  For many years I felt very remorseful over that sale. Later, as a monk, I learned to forgive myself and let it go. After all, I was so immature in my long-haired days.

  I once mentioned this anecdote in a Friday night talk in Perth as an example of forgiveness. Afterward, a young woman in her late twenties came to talk with me.

  “You may not believe me, but this is absolutely true!” she began. “When I was a very young girl growing up in London, a young long-haired student came to our house and sold my Mum and Dad this children’s encyclopedia. I simply loved those books!” she enthused. “They were my favorite books of all. It may not have been you, but thank you so much anyway.” For once I was speechless.

  The way I now understand how this universe works, I am pretty sure that it was I who sold her parents those books.

  37. The Sad Saga of the Suicidal Spider

  A young, happy spider found the perfect corner in a quiet room in which to build her first home. Joyfully she spun and wove a beautiful web, artistic enough to be featured in Spiderworld’s Home and Garden. Exhausted but proud of her efforts, the young spider rested in the center of her web, waiting for lunch.

  An elderly woman entered the room, and on seeing the spider, she screamed so loud even her half-deaf husband heard it. On seeing the cause of her distress, the husband quickly smashed the spider’s first home to smithereens. The spider was lucky to escape with her life.

  Rattled but undaunted, the spider crawled to another house and built a second home, this time not as aesthetic as her first web, but comely enough. Before the spider’s first meal arrived by air, a maid spotted the web and destroyed it with her broom. Again the poor spider fled for her life.

  The same thing happened in the next house, and the next, and the next one after that. After her sixth web was violently destroyed, the poor little spider understandably began to suffer the symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder. She became paranoid of corners, too anxious to spin any more webs.

  As she crawled tired and hungry along the road, she became lost in negative thoughts: “No one likes me. All I want is a quiet home somewhere. I won’t harm anyone; I just want to catch flies and bugs. They don’t want the bugs anyway. Life is so unfair. I’m hungry. I’m tired. I feel so . . . so alone.”

  Then the little spider began to cry.

  Soon her thoughts turned to suicide. “Nobody loves me. What’s the point of going on? I’ll never find a home. I’ll never get food. Maybe I’ll kill myself.”

  The suicidal spider deliberately crawled under the shoes of the passing pedestrians, but she always managed to find herself in the safe space between the heel and the sole. Then she crawled across the busy road but always went between the wheels, never underneath them. When you’re depressed, you can’t do anything right, not even suicide.

  Suicidal spider soon gave up even trying to kill herself. Sobbing and sniffling, she staggered along the road like a drunk, not aware of where she was going. Soon, she felt someone looking at her. She stopped and turned to see a big fat happy spider smiling kindly at her.

  “Why are you crying?” asked the fat happy spider.

  Wiping her nose with a tissue, she told the sad story of her life. After suicidal spider finished her tale of woe, she suddenly realized that not all spiders were thin and depressed. This one was fat and looked very happy.

  “How come you’re so fat and happy?” asked suicidal spider.

  The fat spider smiled softly.

  “Didn’t anyone destroy your webs when you built them?”

  “I only ever built one web in my whole long life,” the spider replied. “I catch plenty of food every day. In fact,” continued fat happy spider, compassionately, “there is more than enough for the two of us. Come and live with me.”

  “Wait a moment,” said suicidal spider. “Where on earth have you built such a web that no one has disturbed it for such a long time?”

  “Oh!” replied fat happy spider, “I built my web in the donation box at Ajahn Brahm’s temple. Nothing ever disturbs me there!”

  38. The Secret to a Happy Marriage

  Why is it that many priests and monks perform marriage rites when they themselves are celibate? I have conducted many marriage ceremonies in my time. Once I even performed a celebrity wedding and had my photo appear in the Malaysian edition of the gossip magazine Hello!

  During the ceremony, I have to give the dewy-eyed young couple some wise words of advice. I do this out of selfishness. I don’t want the couple, who I have just married, to keep bothering me later with their marital problems. So at the ceremony I tell them “The Secret” to a happy marriage and then they leave me alone. I am happy. They are happy. It’s a win-win!

  So what is “The Secret” to a happy marriage?

  At the right moment in the proceedings, usually after the rings have been exchanged, I look into the eyes of the new bride and tell her, “You are a married woman now. From this moment on, you must never think of yourself.” She immediately nods and smiles sweetly.

  Then I look at the groom and say, “You are now a married man. You also must not think of yourself anymore.” I don’t know what it is about guys, but the groom usually pauses for a few seconds before saying “Yes.”

  Still looking at the groom, I continue, “And from this time on, you must never think of your wife.” Then quickly turning to the bride, I say to her, “And you must not think of your husband from now on.”

  I enjoy watching the confused expressions appear on the couple’s faces. You don’t have to be a mind reader to know what they are thinking: “What is this crazy monk on about!”

  Confusion is a
very effective teaching device. Once people are engaged in trying to solve a riddle, then you can teach them the answer and they pay attention.

  “Once you are married,” I explain, “you should not think of yourselves; otherwise you will be making no contribution to your marriage. Also, once you are married, you should not always think of your partner; otherwise you will be only be giving, giving, giving, until there’s nothing left in your marriage.

  “Instead, once you are married, think only of ‘us.’ You are in this together.”

  The couple then turn to each other and smile. They get it straight away. Marriage is about “us,” not about me, not about him, not about her.

  To make sure they understand “The Secret,” I ask them, “When any problem arises in your marriage, whose problem is it?”

  “Our problem,” they answer together.

  “Very good!” I say with a grin.

  In a relationship, if a problem arises and you think that is your partner’s problem, you will not be contributing to a solution. When you think that it is your own problem, then you will neglect half of the solution. But when every difficulty is regarded as “our” problem, you will find solutions together. That creates a rich and happy marriage.

  39. Holy Water

  Another part of the Buddhist wedding ceremony is sprinkling the happy couple with holy water—for good luck. Actually marriages these days need all the luck that they can get, so I usually drench them in it! When much of the bride’s makeup begins to dissolve, with mascara dribbling down her cheeks, I explain to the husband, “Now you can see what she really looks like!” Better he finds out now than later, I say.

  Coming in from overseas to Perth Airport one day, I read the full version of the Australian customs regulations. I was surprised to read that one of the items that you are prohibited to import into Australia is holy water. Check it out! Perhaps this is the reason for such a prohibition: