The glass is already cracked

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• The monkey who knocked on the monk's door

  In brief: An old monk living alone in a bamboo-and-thatch hut deep in the jungle hears a knock one night. At the door is a monkey from the forest…

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  And there was a story this old monk told me. This old monk was he told some wonderful stories. He was living by himself in a bamboo and thatch hut in the middle of the jungle many years ago. He said even one evening late at night there was a knock on his door and he who's knocking on the door. No one comes here at nighttime. And he said that when he opened the door there was a a monkey who was holding a little dead baby. a dead baby monkey in her arms. And he realized this was one of the the monkeys in the forest around him who had lost her kid. And what does the monkey know what to do? He gave it to the monk or she gave it to the monk almost asking the monk, "Can you do something to bring my baby back to life?" And the monk just, you know, looked at the the baby monk. It was dead. no possibility of reviving it. But at least did some chanting and after doing the little chanting for the baby monkey gave the little baby back to its mom and the m monkey just obviously had very wet eyes just went away. which is like how sort of people live in the forest a long time. Actually, you actually the animals get to know you and somehow other this griefstricken mother monkey thought that maybe the monk could do something but it couldn't.

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• The villages without grief

  In brief: Living nine years at a Thai cremation-ground monastery, Ajahn Brahm saw villagers bring their dead without grieving, which contradicted…

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  the monastery I was staying most of the time was a cremation ground. So all the villagers in the local area used that place for the funerals. So we'd do the funeral, we'd see all the villagers, they'd come, bring their dead, we'd do all the chanting and the services, we'd see them that afternoon, that evening, the next day. And there was something very strange, there was no grief, they just didn't cry, not just cry, they weren't even sad when somebody died. This was not suppressing their grief because you saw them every day, they just, wasn't there, it was a culture in which grief was absent and that really shocked me, and I was there nine years so this was no just, short visit, and I thought that was impossible because my learning had said that when you lose someone you love you have to have grief. The truth of the matter, there was no grief there.

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• She came back to see what her husband was up to

  In brief: A retreat participant tells how, dying in hospital while her husband raced to reach her, she was out of her body having a blissful time —…

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  I just remember one lady saying, "Oh, it was just so blissful and beautiful being out of my body," she was in a hospital with some terrible sickness. Her husband was racing to the hospital to try and catch her before she died, but she had already died, she was away having a wonderful time, but then she came back when she was wondering what her husband was up to. [laughter] I mean in a good way, I'm not saying that he was playing around, but you know whether he was worrying about her, whether he was coming, that brought her back. She told us afterwards, "That was the most wonderful experience of my life." I said, "Yeah, probably you like everybody else who's had those experiences are no longer afraid of death." "Yes," she said "I'm not afraid of death. Why should you be afraid of death when you know it's gonna be nice?

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• “I never stopped loving you, George”

  In brief: A Cockney friend of the monastery leaves his wife of about 40 years for a much younger woman; his wife is devastated. Some years later,…

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  Just one which comes to my mind. This man, he was a good friend. He used to come to our monastery. He’s a bit of a Cockney. I was the only one who could really understand him when he came to our monastery. And, you know, after a while he decided he wanted to leave his wife. And he found another a girl much younger than him and he divorced his wife, went to live with this other girl. You know, he broke up. His wife was devastated. But later on, you know after three or four, five years, he was a good guy, you know he sort of split from this second wife. And about that time his first wife got very sick. And he went to visit her in hospital and held her hand when she died. She said “even though you left me, I never stopped loving you, George. I’d always forgive you.” And when I heard that, I thought, wow, that wife you had and he said, “I was so wrong to, to have, left you. I was stupid. I didn’t realise just how beautiful your love was. It was unconditional, even though I caused you pain. And just after about 40 years of marriage, I decided to, you know, go with somebody else.” I know the other girl, she’s a really good girl. You know you can’t really criticise people. But, that woman he married first of all, she was, she understood what love was, totally unconditional and forgiving.

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