'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life' at a funeral

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• The prankster ghost and the three leaves

  In brief: Two young English friends share a house in Perth; one dies young of cancer, promising to come back and haunt his mate. Pranks follow: the…

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  one of our members he's got a great Ghost Story one of his friends let's go back for earlier his friend I moved to to Australia to Perth from England two young men they were friends so they shared a house together as they shared a house there two guys you know they weren't gay or anything they're just um to uh say on R when out had a great time but one of them developed cancer very young he died but before he died he always says I'm going to come back and Haun you you know like what some young people say I'm going to come back and Haun you and apparently he did and he was you know what you call those Lans always like doing practical jokes and so the other fellow who kept the house you know his girlfriend moved in after his mate died and little things would happen like be in the shower and it would turn from the hot to cold so you turn the hot on and it' be boiling little silly things like that but he said and he's quite sure about this one day he went out to work when he came home all the furniture from the landro was in the garden and there was just silly little things but sometimes you know if it's a a mate a friend they do this little jokes on you and his wife apparently could see him his wife wife never knew him and could see this Spectre in the in the house and described he said oh yeah that's him and so they just after all I just accommodate to these people but this member of our Buddha Society I better not say who it is he went to visit his friend I don't believe in ghosts she's just making it up and he was having coffee with his friend at the time and his friend said look he's he's around I'm sure he's around and he asked his friend come and prove to this visitor that you exist there's a pot plant on the table a leaf fell off that pot plant floated horizontally and then went down on the edge of the table half on half off and the visitor said no that's just it's just a wi just [Applause] coincidence and then another Lea fell off horizontal and then went vertically down exactly on top of the second Leaf no no no no just Charles thirdly exactly the same hor is onto straight down on the edge of that Lea and our friend who comes here said I've got to go and just jumped in his bed and just put the foot on the acceler just w didn't run away H you can have nothing to be afraid of it's just ghost playing around

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• The jarrah boat coffin that stuck halfway

  In brief: A white-water rafter's family make his coffin as a boat with paddles — out of jarrah, so heavy ten people lift it. At the committal the…

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  Because there was an open funeral at Fremantle cemetery, you know. Not one of the chapels you've got like… you do the ceremony here and you take the box over to Fremantle. They're just outside. They've got a little conveyor belt. You put it on there, do your stuff and it just goes inside and gets cremated. But at the time it's actually my fault. Because I found out legally you don't have to buy a coffin. You can make your own. But it has to be a certain size. And because this fellow was into white water rafting he made it in the shape of a boat with little paddles on the top. It was him. It was who he was. The trouble was they made it out of jarrah which is incredibly heavy wood. So just getting it out of the the hearse and onto the it took about 10 people to actually lift it up and put it on there. That was okay. But after the saving when you do the commitment of the coffin you press the little button and the conveyor belt sort of goes and the little glass partition moves back, all synchronized, it goes through and the glass partition closes. What happened, it was so heavy that poor motor was struggling to move the conveyor belt. So it only got halfway through when the glass door closed and jammed against it. Halfway in, halfway out. You know what the wife did? The wife grieving for a lovely husband, she jumped on the conveyor belt and started to push. And everyone said “are you trying to get rid of him that much?” And it was a big mistake. But instead of getting embarrassed everybody started laughing. One of his friends reminded everybody that, you know, he knew him before he got married, you know, when he first got his first car he crashed his first car on his first day driving it. Just like the first day and his coffin is crashed out too. Typical of Steve. That was such a memorable funeral.

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• The tsunami ghost who gave a phone number

  In brief: Three days after the 2004 tsunami, a Thai woman in Krabi dreams of a battered English girl from Phi Phi who names the Bangkok temple where…

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  True Story 3 days after the tsunami hit Thailand there was a Thai girl who lived in the town of gby had a dream in the middle of the night and the dream was of this English girl coming up to her but this English girl her hair blonde hair was all tangled and tousled and her face she must have been quite a young girl 19 20 or whatever was all bruised and gashed and her body was all broken with huge gases and blood in it IM made see that this bloody bruised corpse coming to in your dream but because it's in a dream you know you're too sleepy for actually to be too afraid and the ghost kept saying help me help me help me and the ghost said I was on peee Island when the wave hit I'm dead and at this moment she said Tai soldiers are lifting up my body and they're placing me in a temple a Buddhist temple in Bangkok and she said the name of that Temple and my mother who lives in London is desperately trying to call me on my mobile phone but my phone is at the bottom of the ocean please help me can you do two things for me said the ghost first I want a Buddhist funeral I'm not a Buddhist but I want a Buddhist clation can you arrange that for me this is my name this is the temple where my body is right now and number two can you please ask my mother not to come until the cation is over I don't want her to see me like this please can you do this for me and here is my mother's telephone number and she gave this long list of digits after which this TIG girl woke up middle of the night she was married to an English man maybe that's why this Ghost came to see her so she woke up her husband and told her the dream which she had perfect recall of and the husband was surprised because the telephone number was a legitimate London phone number so he said call it she said no call him so they rang the number middle of the night in Thailand late afternoon early evening in London a woman picked up that phone it's true story woman picked up that phone after a short conversation it was the mother of a girl who was missing on people Island it was that ghost mother the name description was perfect so the mother was thankful at least now she knew for sure what she expected deep in her Hearts if you are a mother sometimes you can feel whether your child is alive or dead when they go missing so she gave permission for them to do the funeral service and to let her know when it was completed so she could come and collect her daughter's ashes the next morning they went to puket found the temple found the body got permission through the ceremony and cremated the corpse it said that to the body looked exactly as it did in the dream and having done the creation the mother from London came on an aircraft from Heath Road they met at puket airport handed over the ashes cried and then the mother went home and the tig girl went home with her husband to graby and a couple of nights later they had another dream and in this dream the girl came to the this English girl came to this tire girl again in a dream but this time her hair was Immaculate as if she'd been to Elizabeth ardens or something I don't know are they still in business Elizabeth ardens been a long time since I went 20 hairdresser I do my own but I the best hairdresser in town just beautiful hair and her face no bruises no Cuts as if she had like makeover and her dress white and shiny Immaculate and she said in a dream look what's happened to me look what you've done for me I'm a Heavenly being an angel thank you so much for arranging that ceremony for me and thank you so much for letting my mother know I've come here one more time to say thank you to you thank you so much to express my gratitude said this angel in the dream here is another set of numbers which she also remembered when she woke up but they never tried to dial those numbers cuz if you all suspect that was not a phone number that was a lottery number which won and they made quite a substantial amount of money and that is a true story the mor of that story is if ever you see a ghost don't run away yet ask it for some numbers first and then run like hell we going to do dream don't get afraid come on let's have some numbers please but remember because you heard that story in DCA Buddhist center 10% of your winnings should should go to the temple

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• An email from beyond the grave

  In brief: A dying man in Singapore who had come to love Ajahn Brahm's talks asks to speak with him; his sister gets through and Ajahn Brahm talks…

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  There was a Sri-Lankan lady. She's been listening to my talks a lot, I think she's been over here. And she called me. She had an emergency. During the Retreat time, you're not really supposed to receive many calls. She said 'Can you please help my brother? He's got a very, very bad blood cancer. We sent him to Singapore for treatment. But nothing is working. He's now paralyzed. He's only got a few days to live. Can you please talk to him?' So, of course, you don't worry about retreats and stuff. Of course you help out. So, for two evenings in a row I talked to him on the phone. And he was so weak. When he spoke to me he spoke very slowly and you had to listen very, very carefully to listen to what he was saying. But I gave him some advice about dying, and about letting go. And then the third night, he died... So I called him just in time, which is wonderful. Now, he was paralyzed, he could only.. they had to just... he could only just about speak. The next evening, his sister called me to tell me that he died the night before. But also to tell me: 'You won't believe this Ajahn Brahm This is absolutely true... that this morning, I got an email from him. Just saying 'Thank you'. And the email was sent about 6-8 hours after he died. The email, it's true, email from beyond the grave. So, you're actually wrong here, people actually do. They don't get cell phones, that's passé. That's the 20th century, i this is 21st century They send emails... Twitters, have you checked your Twitter account yet, to see if there's anything? So, now, I told people, 'Now I know what Gmail means'. 'Ghost mail

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