B B C

BBC stands for Buddhist Building Company; I got the meaning from the book of Ajahn Brahmavamso. BBC reminds me of when I was training to be a Dhammaduta monk. I had to pass three parts to training; construction, meditation and academic matter. I was familiar with meditation and academic matter but I wasn’t familiar at all with construction. I didn’t do it, I just gave my friends support until some of them said to me, “Sangthong, let’s try to do it so you can too”. I said to them, “I have never done this and it is not necessary for me to do it”. They still insisted I should try so I laid bricks and mortared. I laid two or three bricks, but some of my friends laughed at me and said, “Stop, stop before you make things worse”. I smiled and stopped work and returned the tools to my friends, saying, “I told you, I have never done this before”. This experience taught me, “There are many things I cannot do. I just do what I can and do it with my best effect”.

In monastic life, we have to do many things which we have never done before because we have to help ourselves as much as we can. Anyway, in the Sangha, we have some monks who are very skilled in carpentry, construction etc. supposing we don’t have any, we would have to learn to do these things or get some support from laypeople. Ajahn Brahmavamso is one of the western monks who had to do such work. One time, he had to build a wall of the temple. At first he tried to do it by himself. When he laid two or three bricks and mortared, he saw that some mistakes had happened. He stopped doing it and called laypeople to help him work. He still looked at the bricks that he had laid, again and again, with repentance, thinking “I should not have done it”. When the wall was finished, he came to inspect the work. Every time he saw the bricks which he had laid, he felt repentant. If he had been able to do so, he would have dismantled the wall. But he could not do that, so the wall still remained the same, with two or three bricks which were wrongly laid.

The time passed by, one day when he was walking in the temple, one visitor stood near the wall and said to him, “This wall is beautiful”. Ajahn Brahmavamso asked him with surprise, “Did you forget to wear your eye-glasses? Haven’t you seen the two or three bricks that damage the beauty of this wall?” The answer of the man made Ajahn Brahmavamso smile and feel optimistic; he answered, “Yes, I see that. But I see a thousand bricks which are good, and well-laid; there are only two or three placed wrongly, but a thousand are well-placed”. After Ajahn Brahmavamso had heard that answer, he could smile every time he saw the wall and the two or three bricks. He reflected on that matter; mostly, when he came near the wall, he would cast immediately his glance at the two or three bricks which he had laid and feel repentant. He never looked at the thousand bricks which were well laid and feel happy with them. After reflection, he said to himself, “I am blind; I have been overpowered by ignorance so that I could not see the beauty of a thousand bricks. I have seen only my faulty, two or three bricks. Now I know and understand it. The ugly wall, which I have seen so far, turns out to be beautiful. Now I can see only the beauty of a thousand bricks, I forget where the two or three bricks are”.

How many people are like Ajahn Brahmavamso? I think a lot of people are like that; seeing only their fault and losing heart, they don’t want to live, sometimes they even think of committing suicide. In spite of the fact that many things in life are good, they have got stuck with a few bad things in life. Sometimes, we don’t see the good things in life yet, don’t judge that life is too bad when we see a few things wrong. One thing, we have to learn to do, is to see the good things of life. It is like a coin which has two sides; when we see one side, we should not judge that this coin is not good. We have to turn to see another side and then we will see how beautiful it is. Many times we destroy the beautiful wall; just because of a few wrong things. Many good things are in it, why do we see only a few wrong things? In the same way, family life is destroyed; just because of a few wrong things. Everyone has ‘the few wrong bricks’ but each of us has a thousand bricks which are beautiful.

Life, or things, is not too bad when we learn to see the good sides of things. When we see those good things, we can live happily with some few faults. We are really like a builder who sometimes does something wrong in his work, but among a few wrong things there are many right things. The technique for seeing the right things is to stop finding fault with oneself and turn up the other side of the coin; we might have done something wrong, but that could be our lesson for development in order to see things beautifully or rightly.