Opening the door of your heart and other Buddhist tales of happiness by Ajahn Brahm
This book contains 108 tales, many of them retellings of old fables and teaching parables, some others personal, which illustrate Buddhist fundamental teachings. A talkative tortoise gets a chance to fly by holding on to a stick held by swans. Brahm embarrasses himself by incorrectly chastising other monks for leaving a tool out in the weather. A wise king defeats a demon through kindness. Brahm shows criminals in jail the way of compassion.
One of the most interesting things about this book was that I got it as an audiobook, and I was listening to it the same week that I was reading MEDITATIONS ON VIOLENCE. The comparison between the two authors’ viewpoints was striking. Brahm works in a high security prison, and sees everyone as a human worthy of compassion and forgiveness. Miller works in a jail, and sees his clients (do you call them clients?) as heartless scum you can’t trust for a second. Who’s right? Both have decades of experience. Brahm told the story of a woman who used positive reinforcement (rewarding any and all kind behaviors) and forgiveness (forgiving her husband when he hit her) to turn her chronically abusive husband into a gentle one. It took her seven years, but through her patience and mercy, she now has a loving and solid marriage. Miller argues that is a foolish thing to stay with a violent man, because he can and will kill her long before she changes him.
Not to say that empathy and forgiveness aren’t useful tools. Brahm also gave the explanation of why Thailand didn’t fall to communism as did so much of its neighbors, and he credits it with the Thai people embarrassing the Buddhist principals of compassion and forgiveness. (Addressing the root cause of the problem–unemployment and poverty–was surely also a huge factor.)
The stories definitely have an Asian viewpoint, as you might expect from a Buddhist monk living in Thailand. There’s the idea that the master is always right (even when he’s lying, making you do unnecessary work, or acting selfishly). It also emphasizes introversion as a virtue. Brahm told the stories of talkative people who suffer death and/or being forced to eat guano as a punishment for the crime of talking too much. He also went on a minor rant about why people saw the need to talk so much, for example, while dining in fine restaurants, which surely spoils the pleasure of the meal. (?!) He proposed a tax on talk, and posited that everyone would be happier, and there’d be less divorce because couples wouldn’t row so much. I strongly disagree, and not just because I come from a culture where extroversion is considered second only to beauty, but also because I think that lack of communication is the cause of most interpersonal conflicts.
I also feel more pity than respect for people who chose a monastic life. The monks own no money, have no possessions of their own, sleep rough, and eat only one poor meal a day. They live off the charity of others. Except for the eating only once a day, this sounds like a homeless person. Even the criminals in the maximum security prison felt pity for the monks. Their life sounds horrible, full of unnecessary suffering. One of the stories tells of a group of monks who were captured by bandits, and the bandits said they would kill one of them as a warning, and it was up to the head monk to decide. The head monk couldn’t choose, because each life was as valuable as the others. If their lives were so valuable, why would they let a toothache go untreated? Or eat rotten fish and/or urine-filled maggoty frogs every day? In my opinion, the difference between unnecessary suffering and unnecessary death is one of degree, but not kind, as physical deprivations very easily and very often lead to death.
Of course, I disagree with a lot of the Buddhist fundamental beliefs because I disbelieve in their tenets. I don’t think that it’s wrong to grieve for the dead, or selfish to do so. I liked the metaphor of a human life being like a great concert, and that all great concerts must come to an end, but you don’t develop deep emotional attachments to music like you do people. Also, I don’t believe in karma or reincarnation, the former because it’s justification for blaming people for bad luck, and the latter because it’s mathematically problematic. Mostly, I don’t like Buddhism because I strongly distrust religion. In one story, he said that a new religious convert was like a child learning a violin, where it sounded awful, but it wasn’t the fault of the violin. A maestro on a violin (ie. a person expert at their religion) was wonderful, and a whole symphony of maestros was best of all. It’s a nice idea, but I don’t buy it. In my experience, religion will make you a better person about as reliably as drinking diet soda will make you thinner.
I got this as an audiobook, and I think it’s a good text for audio, because the stories are short and easy to understand. As far as being inspirational, I’m not sure that it succeeds. It gives advice that I believe is wrong and espouses virtues that I don’t believe are virtues for the sake of karma and enlightenment which I don’t think are real. For a Buddhist, this might be a great book. For a skeptical agnostic who studies psychology as a hobby, it is merely a collection of anecdotes and folk tales, mildly amusing, but of questionable value.
