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• The Pinjarra girl who fed the tiger snake

  In brief: Elder in a Pinjarra home recalls: a little girl takes a saucer of milk under the stumped house each morning for a tiger snake. Mother…

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  old people's home in Pinara and because they didn't get any visitors and seeing a monk in there was great you know this old old uh people and one of them told me this wonderful story I don't know how many years ago this would have been maybe 60 or 70 years ago when he saw this he was a young man at the time and this was about 30 years ago. He told me this story and he was you know in the old people's home now so maybe even older but he said that in that area in Pinter one of his friends you know living in one of these simple old houses and saw a um uh he had a daughter maybe four or five years of age and the daughter would ask the mother for a source of milk every morning and the mother you know they thought milk was going to be very healthy for the kid and asking for something We give the daughter a saucer of milk. Now why not a glass? She said no a saucer please. So after a while mom being very busy decided you know what's why does she want a saucer? Why does she drink it you know in the kitchen? Why does she take it outside? And so she followed her little five or six year old daughter and saw the five or sixyear-old daughter place the saucer of milk just on the foot of the house. you know, the the houses on stumps, raised on stumps, just and call out to whatever was living underneath the house. And a big tiger snake came out. And of course, the daughter was only a maybe a foot away from the tiger snake. And the mother freaked out because the tiger snakes were deadly, as many of you know, and her daughter was so close. And the daughter was feeding this tiger snake every day with a saucer of milk. And so she froze and waited for the snake to drink the milk and then slither away and told her her husband the next that evening. And the husband said, "I'll look after this. No need to do anything. Just give our daughter the source of milk tomorrow." Which she did. And so the little girl, five or six years of age, it went outside the house, put the source of milk down, and called out to its friend, the tiger snake. And the tiger snake slithered out. And just before it drank the milk, its head was blasted off by her father's gun, killed right in front of the girl. From that day on, the girl refused to eat. There's nothing they could do to make it to eat. And this old man said, you know, he called it she started ftting. Never heard that word in that context before. Was ftting and ftting. Eventually, she had to be admitted into the local hospital. But even the local hospital couldn't help her and she died in the hospital. Just so much sadness. so much trauma of seeing this snake killed right in front of her. And this old digger said the father might as well shot her daughter's head off at the time

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• Hawaiian shirts at funerals

  In brief: Early Perth funerals are all black; he wants funeral directors in Hawaiian shirts — kids arrive full of life then learn sadness from black…

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  when I first started doing funeral services here in Perth people were always in Black okay now that this some people have white but I want Funeral Directors to start wearing Hawaiian shirts a nice nice dresses or nice clothes not all this miserable stuff which actually makes people more and more depressed because uh to cry cases I've seen kids and kids are great teachers for me children come into these funerals playing around being naughty like children should be and they're full of life and joy and happiness and then they see everybody else just black wearing black and their faces look sort of black as well and these little kids full of life you can see just the the joy of life just go out of them

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• The only one who knew the answer

  In brief: A boy tells his dad he was the only one in class who knew the right answer today. Surprised — usually it's detention — the proud father…

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  Of course it's a joke about the kid who came home from school and he told, his dad said, “How did you go at school today, Son?” and his son said, “Dad,today teacher asked a question, “and I was the only one in class who knew the right answer,” and the father was both surprised and impressed, say, “Usually you get detention, usually you get extra homework, “just how come today, you know, you did so well?” and he said, “Oh well, I just knew the right answer, Dad.” Dad said, “I'm so proud of you,” and gave him a $20 note as a reward, trying to encourage him to be smart in the future. So as the kid took the $20 and walked out of the room, the dad said, “Oh, by the way, what question did your teacher ask?” “Who broke the window in the classroom?”

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• The paper lotus on the shrine

  In brief: In a Thai village a young woman, brain-damaged from birth, cannot speak but grunts, and her friends understand every grunt; she joins in…

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  There was one lady in the village, lovely lady. Uh but she had some sort of um uh injury when she was born and she was uh mentally impaired, brain damage. But even though she was brain damaged, she couldn't speak any Thai, certainly not any English, a village girl, but she would always grunt. And her grunts, she growing up with her sisters the same age, all her friends knew exactly what grunt meant which. That's a special language she had with her friends. And she was almost at ease with her friends. She would go out to dances and stuff with her friends, have a wonderful life. She wasn't sort of sectioned aside in some institution for people who couldn't speak or were brain damaged. So other parts about her were wonderful. She had a beautiful life and I was very impressed with how people included her in rather than excluding them. So she didn't really worry about the things she couldn't do in other areas. She was brilliant and I love remembering her because she was responsible for one of the greatest acts of kindness and generosity I've seen because I was like, you know, monks, we do work. We don't just sit around all day doing nothing. That's what I should be doing. But anyway, we were I was just sweeping the hall in this monastery in Thailand. That was my job. I was just behind a cupboard when I heard somebody try and sneak into our our main hall and I just peeked around. It was this girl. It wasn't a thief. You I knew her because I've been in that monitor for years. And she was sneaking into the hall. She couldn't speak. She was, you know, brain damaged, but she was in there by herself. And I wonder what the heck she was up to. She never saw me. She went up to the shrine. She put something on the shrine and then as soon as she put it on the shrine, she did her little Buddhist boughs and then she ran away as fast as she could so she wouldn't be seen. But she was seen. I saw everything. And I thanked her for what I saw. I went up to the shrine. She made a paper folded into like a lotus and offered it in front of the Buddha statue. No one could no one could ever call it a work of art, but it certainly was a work of kindness. It's the best she possibly could do. He didn't need to be a mind readader to know how she was thinking. She wanted to give it to the shrine to the Buddha. And she thought if she come when other people were there, they'd have thrown it away. It's not beautiful enough for the Buddha, but it's the best she could possibly do. When I saw that, to me it was beautiful. Not because of what it looked like, but where it came from and how hard it was for her to do that. And so afterwards I told all the monks, you know, I wasn't a senior monk there, but I said to them, look, that little paper flower which was handmade on the shrine, if anybody tries to throw that away, I'm not a violent monk, but I will sort of really sort of fight against you because I know where that came from and how beautiful that was to have a person who felt they were rejected. They managed to find a way in and give a gift. The best they could possibly do.

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