'George, you stupid man'

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• “Don't you ever take away my suffering”

  In brief: At a grief and loss seminar at Observation City, Ajahn Brahm teaches his 'concert' way of letting go of grief: his father's 16 years with…

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  when I went to a pain and loss conference many years ago, and there was a person, they were very…, her daughter was one of the, the victims of the Claremont killer. Anyway, after I gave her some really nice advice about how to let go of her pains, she came up to me, and she, nose to nose almost, she was so angry, she said, “How dare you try to take away my grief??”

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• The parrot that kept vigil

  In brief: A gardener coming to Bodhinyana each day noticed, early one morning at the corner of Kingsbury Drive and the South Western Highway, a…

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  some little time before, we had a gardener who was coming up every day to do some work in Bodhinyana, and he told me the corner of Kingsbury Drive and the South Western Highway, he just noticed as he came early one morning, not much traffic, there was a parrot, was on the branch of a tree, looking down at a dead parrot, which had been hit by a car, maybe early that morning, and when he finished work, he noticed that parrot was still there, looking down, hadn't moved. The next morning, the parrot was still on the tree, looking down. About three or four days, the parrot hadn't moved, looking down at the dead parrot on the side of the road. If that wasn't grief, I don't know what is.

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• The polka-dot bow tie

  In brief: A Kalgoorlie builder dying of cancer comes to the monastery for counselling about death, dressed as always in thongs, shorts and a…

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  one of the gentlemen um here he had a friend in Calgi who was a builder. The builder got cancer and the friend invited the builder to come to Bodin Island Monastery for some counseling about dying. And of course eventually the builder died. Even when he visited me, he visited me the best clothes he possibly could have which was always like thongs and shorts and a singlet. That's all the clothes he would wear. And then uh when he died it was a closed coffin. Of course I never went there. It was done in Kgori, but my friend who lived over here did and then a few days later friend was woken up in the middle of the night. Somebody had poked him. He thought of his thought it was his wife and he told his wife off and realized his wife was fast asleep. It wasn't her and he saw it was his friend who died. But what really surprised him, this builder was wearing a polka dot bow tie and a nice suit. He said, "This is weird." Cuz I'd never seen in my life him wear this s sort of clothing. And then he woke his wife up to say this is uh this guy has come to see us. And of course after he know lost that one or two moments of contact then she couldn't find him anymore. When he come and told me that story, I said, "Uh, did you see him in his coffin?" He said, "No, it was a closed coffin." And I said, "As soon as you can, please call his wife in Calguri." You know, he was living in Perth and ask, you know, um, what was No, just ask ordinary questions and then just ask in passing what was he wearing in his coffin? And that's when his wife admitted said, "Oh, you know, I bought him this suit years ago. He never wore it cuz he just like ordinary Australian garb." And so I dressed him in a nice shirt, a polka dot bow tie, and this um uh this suit cuz he would never wear it usually. Niku was dead. He couldn't complain. And that's exactly how he saw him in the in this vision.

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• Paṭācārā, who lost everything

  In brief: Paṭācārā, from a good family, runs away with her low-born lover. Pregnant, she tries to return to her parents to give birth but delivers…

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  But I always tell them about one of the greatest nuns that ever was. Her name was Patara. And her story was that she'd run away with her lover. She came from a very good family. Her lover I think was just a lowborn. But they loved each other were both very good. And eventually she had a child and they thought if they go back to their parents' house, you know, when they just let themelves or let them her give birth in her parents' house, that would actually make the parents a bit more amunable to her husband. But they she gave birth on the way. So they went straight back to their village. And so they tried that a second time. And again she gave a like a few days premature birth and I was in the forest and after the new baby was born. Her husband who you know just really looked after her, loved her to bits, went looking for some wood to keep her warm and took a piece of wood but it was a snake and the snake bit him and he died. So, so she'd just given birth to her second child and now she lost her husband, Snakebite. So, she decided she had to go back to see her parents. No husband had died. She had two kids. But then she had to cross a big stream which was in flood and she had like a two or three year old kid and a new baby. What should she do? So she put the baby or she put the the told the new kid no told her two or three year old son you wait on this bank and I'll wade across the stream with the new baby and then I'll put the baby down on the other side and come for you and if I if you see me waving or something then just come straight away. So she got across the stream with her new kid, put the kid down sort of in a safe place on the dry bank, and then waited back again to get her elder son. But as she was midstream, she saw a big eagle come and swoop on her little baby. And of course, she was frantic. She waved her hands around trying to scare the bird away. But instead, the bird wasn't scared. She was in the middle of the stream. So, the bird took away her baby. And her 2-year-old kid thought mommy was calling him and weded into the river and got swept away. So, now she lost two kids. And if that wasn't bad enough, when she was trying to make her way back to her village that she heard from somebody there had been a big storm in that village the night before and her two parents had been killed in the storm. She'd lost her two children, parents and her husband on the same day. Now you can imagine what grief does to you. She went mad, crazy. She didn't know what to do, where to go. But eventually, she wandered into the temple totally naked and screaming her head off. And she when she walked into the temple, the Buddha was giving a sermon. And so people there at the edge of the the crowd, the congregation, the audience said, "You can't come in here. You're badly dressed. you're crazy. But the Buddha said, "No, let her in." You know, she was a young woman, you know, just given birth to a couple of children, maybe in her 20ies, and the Buddha out of kindness said, "Let her in." And one of the monks got his robe and put it around her so she was a little bit more uh decent. And that was the start of Patara's um entry into being a a nun. And one of the reasons I tell that story as a great tragedy, great grief. But then that nun became one of the most famous teachers in the whole of the nuns community. cuz this is just not what other people tell me cuz I remember just reading all these stories of great nuns in the time of the Buddha. And I think many of you may be able to relate to this. Sometimes you've been meditating and meditating and meditating and practicing going on retreats but sometimes you're getting nowhere. You feel my meditation a brah talks about these nimitas and janna and stuff like that. I've got nowhere near that. Why not? And this was some of the nuns were like that. And then they said, you know, in their little record of their enlightenment that this great nun came and taught them how to meditate. And they were just enlightened within a few days. And that nun's name was Patara. That was her amazing teacher.

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