who ordered this truckload of Dung? -PERFECTION and GUILT - The Child in the supermarket

The Child in the supermarket

by Ajahn Brahm

I tell my jailbird buddies never to think of themselves as criminals, but rather someone who has done a criminal act. Because if they are told they are criminals, if they are treated as criminals and if they believe they are criminals, they become criminals. That's how it works.
A young boy dropped a carton of milk at the supermarket checkout and it split open, spilling milk all over the floor. "You stupid child!" said the mother.
In the very next aisle, another boy dropped a carton of honey. It broke open too, spreading honey over the floor. " that was a stupid thing you did,"said his mother.
The first child had been classified stupid for life; the other has had only one fault pointed out. The first will probably become stupid, the other will learn to stop doing stupid things.
I ask my friends in prison what else they did the day of their crime. What else did they do the other days of that year? What else did they do the other years of their life? Then I repeat the story of my brick wall. There are other bricks in the all that represent our life apart from our crimes. In fact, the good bricks are always many, many more than the bad. Now, are you a bad wall deserving destruction? Or are you a good wall with a couple of bad bricks, just like the rest of us? 
A few months later after I became abbot and stopped visiting jails, I receives a personal phone call from one of the prison officers. He asked me to come back. He gave me a compliment I will always treasure. He told me that my students at the prison, once they had finish their sentences, never returned to jail.

So far, This is one of the best stories that kind of summarize up a few stories before this. We human tend to look at people's(Children, students, partner, parents, siblings, friends, etc) bad bricks, and we tell them they are like that, they always like that and Sentence them in your own rules. 


I had a discussion with someone a few weeks ago, he said: once you lie, you're consider a lier. This stories just came to my mind and I explain, there are so many moments in our life, just now, future, yesterday, last month, last week, etc. But the most important moment in our life is NOW. NOW, I'm not lying, do you still consider me a lier? How about the next moment? I think we all have a answer in our mind. 


Open up our mind, who never make a mistakes, is not a big deal at all .... ....
sometimes, we take life so seriously and we indirectly hurt lots people around us.