Spiritual leader and Buddhist monk Ajahn Brahm preaches acceptance during annual visit to Albany

Sitting cross-legged on the floor of the Lions Club in Collingwood Heights, where the only wall not lined with pennants is adorned with an Australian flag and a portrait of the Queen, three men in orange robes smile benignly at their visitors. Every Friday, the modest hall is transformed into a meditation space led by Albany’s own Buddhist monk Ajahn Mudu. Tonight, the room is graced with the presence of a very special guest, 72-year-old Ajahn Brahm. The Cambridge-educated spiritual leader who founded the Theravada Buddhist monastery in Serpentine, about 60 minutes drive south-east of Perth, comes to Albany once a year. His visit has drawn a crowd of about 45 people — a melting pot of cultures, nationalities and ages though skewed female. Some are Thai or Singaporean, others British or Australian. All are sitting quietly as the proceedings begin, either seated on the carpet or perched on chairs. The first order of business — muffins. A supporter who comes every month with baked goods makes the offering, though the monks won’t partake until the following day having already had their one meal at lunchtime. An attendant, Anagarika Ben, who is in his first 12 months of training to one day become an Ajahn or “teacher”, stows the Tupperware container out of sight. Seven women in ornate dress offer the monks some flowers before bowing repeatedly as they enthusiastically chant in Thai, praying to the monks for forgiveness and offering their forgiveness in return. The session then begins in earnest with Brahm sharing anecdotes from his storied life — from officiating a celebrity wedding in Thailand to visiting prisons. He uses the metaphor of a tree to illustrate the beauty in nature’s imperfection, telling those assembled to accept their shortcomings for “the trees that are the most natural and bent, they are the most beautiful ones”. “Each one of you has been damaged by life,” he says. “Even though you are not perfect, you belong. “You belong in the natural forest of our world.” The Buddhist tradition is all about embracing one’s flaws with Brahm’s own awakening to this idea coming when he was tasked with building a wall. With a degree in theoretical physics from the University of Cambridge and a short career as a high school teacher, Brahm was not accustomed to physical labour when he travelled to Thailand to train with Ajahn Chah as a 23-year-old. He soon adapted, however, taking great pride in his bricklaying as he helped the monastery expand its modest operations. Eventually, he built an entire brick wall himself only to notice that two of the bricks were crooked. With great shame, he asked if he could take it down and start again but was denied and the wall stayed. One day, a visitor remarked on the “nice” wall, which Brahm responded to with shock, pointing to the two crooked bricks. The visitor surprised him by remarking that he could see the two bad bricks, but he could also see “998 good bricks”. “That was the first time I could see anything other than my mistakes,” he said. Approaching his 50th year as a monk, the spiritual leader’s sense of humour has evidently not waned, joking that — given his vow of celibacy — he is always surprised when people come to him for marriage counselling. When one audience member asks Brahm what he will do when he retires, he quips “monks have already retired”. And in one of two analogies centred around excrement, he uses the analogy of stepping in dog poo to poignantly illustrate the opportunities that can be found in hardship. “You have to take it home with you and then you scrape it off in your garden under the apple trees or whatever else you’re growing in the back of your garden and then you’ll find one year from now your apples will be so many and so juicy, the sweetest apples you’ve ever grown in your garden,” he said. “...That’s why whenever something terrible happens in life, that’s what we use it for, to learn and grow to become better human beings. “We learn from these and take the opportunities and become better human beings.” “They’re opportunities for each one of us to create a better world from the dog poo of our life.” Much of his advice — though involving a surprising amount of poo — embodies the wisdom of a centuries-old tradition. The Thai Forest Tradition is a school of Theravada Buddhism that is based on the earliest record of the Buddha’s teachings, known as the Pali Cannon, and differs from the Tibetan Buddhism associated with the Dalai Lama. Brahm is not to be mistaken for a traditionalist, however, earning himself an Order of Australia medal for services to Buddhism and gender equality in 2019 after he controversially ordained four nuns or ‘bhikkhunis’ at his Serpentine monastery in 2009. The practice had long been absent from the Thai Forest Tradition in which Brahm was trained and its revival caused much controversy in Thailand where Brahm was excommunicated from the monastery that ordained him. Brahm’s establishment of a Theravada monastery in Western Australia in 1983, thousands of kilometres from the tradition’s origins in southeast Asia, has meant that monks, like Mudu, can be ordained locally. A student of Brahm, Mudu grew up in Sorrento in Perth and heard about the monastery through a Thai friend. “Usually you go through some sort of suffering in life and wake up and think there must be something better than going through this craziness all the time,” he said. “I had something like that which most monks and nuns do.” Like Brahm, Mudu’s Buddhist name does not match the one found on his passport. Once a mechanical engineer, the man formerly known as Neil Proudfoot heads up the only monastery in the Great Southern, a 65ha lot in Elleker. He became Mudu at his ordination, rising from the rank of Anagarika to Venerable and finally Ajahn — a 10-year endeavour. He can occasionally be seen walking down York Street or Stirling Terrace with Venerable Nivato, collecting alms from local businesses. In return, he says “we try to serve the community the best way we can, which is predominantly by teaching meditation”. He credits Brahm with teaching him much of what he knows and hopes that “one day we might have a local lad from Albany who wants to ordain”. Though the chanting and meditation might not be for everyone, Brahm’s concluding message of “total unconditional love to yourself” made an impression on the room. “Somehow, someone has ingrained this into you that you are faulty, there’s something wrong with you, and you have to fix that up to be happy in life,” he said. “Please do not fix anything up — number one, that will make you worse, trying to fix up your faults. “Just be who you are and be at peace with who you are.”