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Thank you for 30 marvellous years
Extra
Two Bad Bricks
After we purchased the land for our monastery in 1983 we
were broke. We were in debt. There were no buildings on the
land, not even a shed. Those first few weeks we slept not on
beds but on old doors we had bought cheaply from the salvage
yard; we raised them on bricks at each corner to lift them off
the ground. (There were no mattresses, of course—we were forest
monks.)
The abbot had the best door, the flat one. My door was ribbed
with a sizeable hole in the center where the doorknob would have
been. I joked that now I wouldn’t need to get out of bed to go
to the toilet! The cold truth was, however, that the wind would
come up through that hole. I didn’t sleep much those nights.
We were poor monks who needed buildings. We couldn’t afford to
employ a builder—the materials were expensive enough. So I had
to learn how to build: how to prepare the foundations, lay
concrete and bricks, erect the roof, put in the plumbing—the
whole lot. I had been a theoretical physicist and high-school
teacher in lay life, not used to working with my hands. After a
few years, I became quite skilled at building, even calling my
crew the BBC (“Buddhist Building Company”). But when I started
it was very difficult.
It may look easy to lay a brick: a dollop of mortar underneath,
a little tap here, a little tap there. But when I began laying
bricks, I’d tap one corner down to make it level and another
corner would go up. So I’d tap that corner down then the brick
would move out of line. After I’d nudged it back into line, the
first corner would be too high again. Hey, you try it!
Being a monk, I had patience and as much time as I needed. I
made sure every single brick was perfect, no matter how long it
took. Eventually, I completed my first brick wall and stood back
to admire it. It was only then that I noticed—oh no!—I’d missed
two bricks. All the other bricks were nicely in line, but these
two were inclined at an angle. They looked terrible. They
spoiled the whole wall. They ruined it.
By then, the cement mortar was too hard for the bricks to be
taken out, so I asked the abbot if I could knock the wall down
and start over again—or, even better, perhaps blow it up. I’d
made a mess of it and I was very embarrassed. The abbot said no,
the wall had to stay.
When I showed our first visitors around our fledgling monastery,
I always tried to avoid taking them past my brick wall. I hated
anyone seeing it. Then one day, some three or four months after
I finished it, I was walking with a visitor and he saw the wall.
“That’s a nice wall,” he casually remarked.
“Sir,” I replied in surprise, “have you left your glasses in
your car? Are you visually impaired? Can’t you see those two bad
bricks which spoil the whole wall?”
What he said next changed my whole view of that wall, of myself,
and of many other aspects of life. He said, “Yes. I can see
those two bad bricks. But I can see the 998 good bricks as
well.”
I was stunned. For the first time in over three months, I could
see other bricks in that wall apart from the two mistakes.
Above, below, to the left and to the right of the bad bricks
were good bricks, perfect bricks. Moreover, the perfect bricks
were many, many more than the two bad bricks. Before, my eyes
would focus exclusively on my two mistakes; I was blind to
everything else. That was why I couldn’t bear looking at that
wall, or having others see it. That was why I wanted to destroy
it. Now that I could see the good bricks, the wall didn’t look
so bad after all. It was, as the visitor had said, ‘a nice brick
wall.’ It’s still there now, twenty years later, but I’ve
forgotten exactly where those bad bricks are. I literally cannot
see those mistakes any more.
Source: Ajahn Brahm
The Human Odyssey...
The earliest remains of the Homo
sapiens yet discovered dates back to 300,000 years.
We probably evolved in the
African region,
but then migrated to the rest of the world. Although our
physical appearance changed over time, our race didn't: we
remained human beings.
Remains of the world's
earliest religious worship site
have been discovered in Botswana, where our ancestors performed
advanced rituals, worshipping the python some 70,000 years ago.
So many religions have emerged and disappeared that no religion
can claim superiority over other religions. Religion is only one
of the
means to realize God, but
it is not an end to itself.
The central problem facing our planet is human overpopulation.
Today there are over
8 billion beings on Earth and the
population is still growing. There are too many people and
not enough resources for all of us. Yet,
we are not addressing this
problem responsibly. Do you really think your life will be
better if there are more people of your colour,
caste or creed on
Earth?
Initially used as fire for light, heat, cooking and for safety,
energy has been harnessed by humans for millennia. Today, fossil
fuels have become our main energy sources. This is leading to
climate change and global warming.
The Earth has entered a new era called
anthropocene, which marks
the beginning of the
sixth mass extinction. Many species have already disappeared
from the planet and our own days, as a species, are numbered.
Artificial intelligence has surpassed human intelligence. While
humans think they will be using
AI to win wars against other
nations, AI itself has outwitted human psychology to make us
lose each and every war. Warfare has never been a solution to
human problems...