Ah So / Ar**hole
Table of Contents
During the March 2025 Executive Retreat in Vietnam, I was the kappiya to Ajahn Brahm. One story that Ajahn told during the retreat was about a Japanese Zen master, who reacted to everything (good, bad or neutral) with the words “Ah So.”
What was interesting was the fact that many retreatants (including my wife) heard Ajahn saying “Ar**hole” instead of “Ah so…”. Which was clearly NOT the case, since swearing & abusive speech is against the monastic rules (specifically Pacittiya 2 in the monk’s Vinaya), and Ajahn is a Vinaya master who is quite a stickler for the rules.
A female retreatant felt disturbed enough by this, to actually tell me “please tell Ajahn that it sounded like he was swearing!” Since this was asked of me to relay to Ajahn, I duly did so. Ajahn’s reaction was along the lines of “That’s not my problem, that your minds went there!”
I share this story, as I had a similar reflection arising from a significant interaction in the 2025.
For context, I was part of a Buddhist mentorship programme as a mentor; I have been since the programme started during Covid times.
In the later part of the year, I was informed by the organizers that they had some feedback to give me. Unfortunately, the feedback giving never happened, due to scheduling conflicts… but from our exchanges, it seemed clear to me that the feedback for me came from an existing mentee of the programme. I found that puzzling; it seemed to me that the interactions I’ve had with my mentees were generally … ok?
Anyway, I thought I had better make amends and to investigate this further.
After some digging, I managed to identify & connect with my mentee whom I had caused offence. And I am incredibly grateful to this mentee for the candid feedback, because this was a complete revelation for me.
The TLDR was that, the moment of offence happened during the very first meeting we had. The mentee shared a particular moment, and apparently what I said in response was perceived to be extremely harsh; so harsh that it shocked the mentee completely. The mentee told me they decided to just give cursory answers & not engage further.
On my side, I actually vividly remember feeling this swell of compassion for the mentee as I listened to the sharing… and I remembered deliberately couching my response in the words “it seems like…” since it was just my own perception and not an objective truth… I was (and still am) completely surprised that, what appeared to me to be straightforward but gentle speech, somehow landed sounding extremely harsh, and that she decided to just not engage anymore but just make stuff up after that…
Later, as I unpacked this with a close Dhamma friend (who also has a higher EQ than me, my wife says), he explained to me “when you say ‘it seems like XYZ’, what people hear you say is ‘I think you are XYZ’!”, especially in a Singaporean context. Honestly, that was complete news to me!
The mentee also gave the feedback that it was hard and tiring to talk to me, as I was always negating. I found that to be extremely ironic, given that I found myself exhausted talking to this mentee: every conversation was a debate, with every single thing challenged… this irony was also not lost on the mentee’s friends, who pointed out that the mentee also tended to negate, challenge and debate. I think this often brought out the combative-debater side of my conditioning, in our interactions.
When I asked my closest friends (including my wife) about this observation, they affirmed that yes, I tended to negate, challenge and debate. Again, I found this to be a huge surprise, since I often find myself in agreement with others… so… how is it that this comes across that way??
I think the answer lies in my own conditioning, specifically how my family was and is like.
Growing up, my parents encouraged my sister and I to discuss and even debate a lot. This debate was also necessary, as our family operated on the principle of collective decision-making: my parents didn’t make unilateral decisions, but instead, every major family decision (especially about money matters) was discussed.
I vividly remember how we decided to move from a HDB to a landed property in 1992. My sister and I were able to veto house choices that we didn’t like; and when the entire family needed to chip in, my mum also asked us for permission to use our bank account monies for the downpayment.
When my grandmother died 2-3 years ago and we had to discuss what to do, I remember one discussion where my wife whispered to me “are you ok?”
Me: yeah! why?
Wife: Why are all of you talking so loudly and quickly??
And I had to explain to her that, that’s just how we are as a family… we tend to be very upfront and blunt when we discuss things.
And in retrospect, that probably explains a lot (in my mind at least) why I often unintentionally cause offence. My conditioning is really quite different from most other Singapoerans…
One person who clearly understands where I came from, is a Singapoeran friend/colleague who previously studied in Japan. While in Japan, she was often told that she was rude, offensive, etc., and it was a bewildering experience for her.
When I told her about this exchange I had, she was one of the few Singaporean friends who could relate to how I felt: a sense of surprise, but also a bewilderment of how something could have landed so differently from my internal view.
It is basically a form of culture shock, especially from a lower-context, more explicit culture, to a higher-context, more implicit culture. In a more contextual, implicit culture, many things are a “given”, because these signals are crystal clear within that culture.
However, if you’re from a lower-context culture (like I am, from my family), then these signals don’t register. At All.
That explains why the mentee was adamant to me that “if you know you come across as being harsh, then shouldn’t this be a point of feedback for you to change/improve??” and my response was “I didn’t even know I came across as being harsh!”
It is a literal blindspot. So I am grateful to the mentee for pointing out the blindspot to me.
But there was one other aspect to this entire interaction.
It occurred to me that this was very similar to the “Ah So” / “A***hole” incident with Ajahn Brahm:
- what Ajahn said was one thing
- what others heard, influenced by what they perceived and possibly projected, was something completely different.
It reminds me of the Buddhist concept of vipallasa: the corruptions of the cognitive process. It roughly goes as follows:
- your View causes
- your Perceptions to be filtered, which then feed
- your Thoughts, that reinforce…
- your View, etc.
And in my case, even if my words and mental thoughts were genuinely coming from a place of no ill-will nor fault finding, I have to be aware that the receipient’s perceptions would be heavily conditioned by their environment and culture.
And hence, especially if they come from an ultra fault-finding culture like Singapore’s, there will be a strong degree of harshness in their Perceptions.
So, while this type of psychological projection is out of my control, what I can do is to be even more mindful of this tendency (to interpret the words in the harshest possible light, even if that is totally absent in my mind) in all of my future interactions and communication.
So that in future I don’t come across as an A***hole for saying Ah So…!
Written on Sunday 1 Feb 2026, 820pm.