Who ordered the Truckload of Dung Stories Summarised
- Focusing on fault - blinds you from the correct and normal
- the messy garden is perfect - so enjoy it
- what’s done is finished - to have a break or retreat, the work must be finished - so simply call it finished (let it go)
- look at the work you have done instead of what remains - forget faults
- guilt and absolution - Guilt is hammered into us “Better to light a candle than complain about the darkness.”
- the human mind wants to correlate things and outsmarts itself into believing the falseness - just be kind, true and honest
- You are not defined by your mistakes - there is no you
- We are all crims - if we focus on the negative we become negative - look at the good
- Letting go of guilt forever - convince yourself you can be forgiven - forgive yourself - be kind to yourself - let go - be free
Love and Commitment#
- unconditional love - no strings attached
-
open the door to your heart - the love for others can be equal and equal to the love for yourself - be at peace with yourself
love thy neighbor as thyself
-
Harmony is more important than a person being right or wrong about an insignificant fact
- Be grateful for the faults in your wife - if she didn’t have them she would have chosen someone better than you
- Romance is a fantasy - you don’t truly love your wife or girlfriend - you love the idea - you love the high
- True love is selfless love
Fear and Pain#
- If you are ruled by fear - you are in prison
- Your future will be uncertain - Ajahn Chah
- Fear is finding fault with the future
- Fear is dissolved in the uncertainty of the future. But if we don’t use our wisdom, fear can dissolve us.
- All fear begins with the thought What if and continues with something disastrous.
- To trump fear - enjoy yourself - you can’t have fear and fun at the same time
- Let go of the control freak within you - let go means be at peace with.
- Anticipation — fear — is the major ingredient of pain.
Anger and Forgiveness#
- ANGER IS NOT A CLEVER RESPONSE. Wise people are happy, and happy people don’t get angry.
- Anger only proceeds - if you have justified it in your mind - you have chosen
- Avoid expectation.
- It is difficult to be kind to something so ugly and offensive as pain, but there will be times in our life when we have no other option.
Ajahn Chah predicted once that the world would run out of paper for banknotes and metal for coins, so the people would have to find something else for everyday transactions. He predicted that they would use little pellets of chicken shit for money. People would go around with their pockets full of chicken shit. Banks would be full of the stuff and robbers would try to steal it. Rich people would be so proud of how much chicken shit they owned and poor people would dream of winning a big pile of chicken shit in the lottery. Governments would focus excessively on the “chicken shit situation” in their country, and would relegate environmental and social issues to be considered later, only after there was enough chicken shit for the national defense.
What is the essential difference between banknotes, coins, and chicken shit? None.
Excerpt From: Brahm. “Who Ordered This Truckload of Dung?.” iBooks.
The future is impermanent - no one knows what will happen next
This too shall pass
Positive forgiveness - forgiveness and taking steps for positive change
Creating Happiness#
Flattery gets you everywhere - Give praise.
The hardest person to give any praise to is ourself
Smile - that creates happiness.
This too will pass
Unpleasant things, like coming last in our class, happen in life. They happen to everyone. The only difference between a happy person and one who gets depressed is how they respond to disasters.
Gradually you use the dung to fertilise the garden and eventually it goes away and you are much wiser for it.
Pain is good - it directs us away from danger.
Kamma - when we are made to suffer know that some bad decision or act was done by you in the past
Critical Problems and their Compassionate Solutions#
When there’s nothing to do, then do nothing
Whenever the current is stronger than you are, that is the time to go with the flow. When you are able to be effective, that is the time to put forth effort.
Whatever you are doing, give it everything you’ve got
When he was working, he’d give it everything he’d got. When he was resting, he’d give it everything he’d got. When he was socializing, he’d give it everything he’d got. It was a formula for success. Oh, and when he was doing nothing, he’d give nothing everything he’d got.
How much time do we waste in our lives worrying about things that, at the time, have no solution, so aren’t a problem? If there is no solution, then there is no problem.
Don’t blame others: A man had an itch on his ass. He scratched his head. The itch never went away.
When is the most important time? Now. Who is the most important person? The one you are with. Make the other person feel important. If you are by yourself it is you. What is the most important thing to do? To care.
The everyday thoughts in our heads are like reading a news paper than hides the glorious nature. You only get the clarity if you let go.
Do one thing.
Deep inside, most people know what’s right and wrong — only some don’t listen carefully.
The Mind and Reality#
Self-preservation can be a calming force.
Wisdom is not learning, but seeing clearly what can never be taught.
The mind contains the universe
He who knows, doesn’t say; He who says, doesn’t know.
Each one of us can know only a part of the whole that constitutes truth. When we hold on to our limited knowledge as absolute truth, we are like one of the blind men feeling a part of the elephant and inferring that their own partial experience is the truth, all else being wrong. Work together towards a body of knowledge - leverage and learn from others.
Values and the Spiritual Life#
We all need to grant ourselves the time and the peace to climb that spiritual pyramid inside each one of us, to rise above and beyond the tangled jungle that is our life
“The most essential part of caring is where we’re coming from.”
Also be kind to yourself - don’t let others harm or kill you. Stand up for yourself.
Wisdom and Inner Silence#
Don’t think that you know best for others. They must be free to choose.
Have priorities - the first is inner happiness.
- You study for primary school exams, you’re teachers tell you to stop playing football and stay home and study - for it will make you happy. Then it doesn’t.
- Then you are told to study and do well in high school because it will make you happy. Then it doesn’t.
- Then you are told a university degree, work very hard to get it.
- Then in your very job, work very hard.
- They are saving to buy a car and say when I have saved and bought a car I will be happy. It doesn’t.
- Then looking for a partner, saying when they settle down they will be happy.
- Once married, they were not happy.
- Then they are told to buy their own house - then they will be happy. It doesn’t, but it does lock them into a monthly contract.
- Then kids. It would be 20 years before they could do what they wanted.
- By the time kids left home, most would be staring at retirement.
- When I retire I will be happy…
For those that believe when I get, this or get that or do this or that - I will be happy - they will never achieve happiness. It will always be just out of reach.
Why do we believe that we have to work so hard and get rich first, before we can find contentment?
It is when you want for nothing. Contentment is the only time you have enough.
Freedom and Humility#
There are 2 kinds of freedom to be found in our world: the freedom of desires, and the freedom from desires. Western culture only recognises the first.
With people who live a virtuous life. True, they are not free to follow their desires and indulge here and there, but they are free from so many dangers and discomforts. Just like fish in a fish tank.
Any place you don’t want to be, no matter how comfortable, is a prison for you.
If you are in a job where you don’t want to be, you are in a prison
If you are in a relationship where you don’t want to be, you are in a prison.
If you are in a sick and painful body where you don’t want to be, then that too is a prison for you.
The real freedom is freedom from desire, never freedom of desire.
If someone calls you a dog, don’t get angry. Instead, just look at your bottom. If you can’t see a tail there, then it means you’re not a dog. End of problem. - Ajahn Chah
the Buddha clearly stated that one who gets angry is certainly not enlightened
If you obsess about your self - everything anyone else does can be misconstrued to be about you.
We are all allowed to make mistakes. It is important to learn from them.
When you abandon your ego, then no one can diss you
If someone calls you a fool, then the reason you get upset can only be that you believe they may be right!
If someone calls you an idiot and you immediately let it go, then it doesn’t bother you. There is the solution. Why allow other people to control your inner happiness?
Suffering and Letting Go#
Thinking about it is much harder than doing it.
When you are young you long for being old. When you are old you long for being young. Just exchanging one form of suffering for another.
To think that you will be happy by becoming something else is delusion. Becoming something else just exchanges one form of suffering for another form of suffering. But when you are content with who you are now, junior or senior, married or single, rich or poor, then you are free of suffering.
Grief is what we add on to loss
Grief is seeing only what has been taken away from you. The celebration of a life is recognizing all that we were blessed with, and feeling so very grateful.
Some people simply don’t want to be free from trouble. If they haven’t got enough problems of their own to worry about, then they tune in to the television soaps to worry about fictional characters’ problems. Many take anxiety to be stimulating; they regard what is suffering to be good fun. They don’t want to be happy, because they are too attached to their burdens.