The man who attended his own funeral

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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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• “I can't understand Thai ghosts”

  In brief: At an open-air cremation in Thailand (of Ajahn Chah's brother, he thinks) all the monks leave as soon as the chanting ends. The young…

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  When I remember I just went uh Ajahn Chah's I think his brother died when I first went up to to Thailand and they did this open cremation. And so, it's after they they had all the monks around the fire and we all did the chanting and as soon as we could, all the monks left. Then afterwards, I said, "Oh, I'm just going to go by the fire." They said, "You go by the fire?" I said, "Yeah." They said, "Alone?" I said, "Yeah." "Aren't you afraid of the ghosts?" I said, "No, I'm not afraid of the ghosts. I can't understand Thai." Cuz even if the ghost goes something in Thai, I don't know what they're talking about. So, what's the point of being afraid? Is that the case that Thai ghosts only speak in Thai? And Sri Lankans only in Sinhalese? So, if it's a Western ghost and you don't understand English, you've got nothing to worry about

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• The corpse in the elevator

  In brief: Funeral directors collecting a body from a top-floor old apartment find the gurney will not fit the stairs or elevator, so they hold the…

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  there's no way you can get sort of like the the little it was not coffin yet a little um trolley they put the dead person on so strap him in there and just you know to try and take him take him down the stairs but even in the elevator the elevator was too small and he was on the top story so what to do that is it'd be it'd be like some comedy show but this was real life you know real life is much more funny than anything they can invent on the TV so what they did you know they decided well the only thing to do is actually just carry him down ourselves so that they forgot about the trolley that just his two Funeral Directors you know in Black they look pretty sort of weird already and with the dead person in between just holding on to him standing and of course it's one of these though one of these old apartment blocks where everybody knew one another so they knew this guy has died so top story about six stories or something down to the ground floor where the horse was waiting they were praying please nobody pressed the button halfway down but of course there is some law which is even the most powerful law in the whole universe which you can rely upon it's called Murphy's Law it's something can go wrong it does go wrong so the elevator stopped on the third floor halfway down they couldn't do anything about it and when it does open there's this little old lady who'd also lived in the apartment block for a long time and you can imagine what she saw this guy who she knew was dead standing between these two guys in Black and my friend the funeral director he said we don't know how this happened but we lost control of him and he started Falling Towards the old woman she just dropped out what should we do next so they thought they had to say we can do they they grabbed on the guy again and pressed the button and they just hope they didn't have another customer they ran up the stairs afterwards and she was okay she was a bit shocked but you know when it can happen it does happen

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• Ghost stories on the walk to the grave

  In brief: At a Chinese burial in Kolkata Cemetery he kills ten minutes walking with an elderly funeral director and asks for ghost stories — she has…

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  Kolkata Cemetery. There was a Chinese funeral and so those of you who know Kolkata cemetery that you start at the gate and we go in procession leading the cortees in this case was a burial and the Chinese burial site is the furthest away from the entrance and I knew I've been there many times about 10 or 15 minutes walk so I knew I had no know uh 10 minutes to kill that's the wrong word at a funeral but you know I knew it's just know 10 minutes walk. So we were just uh the funeral director, she was an elderly woman and uh I said, "How long you been in this industry?" And she said, "Oh, you know, for 20, 30 years." Said, "Oh, great. Just to pass the time till we get to the the grave site. Have you got any ghost stories

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