Falling off a Scottish cliff, his life flashed by

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• The head on the morgue windowsill

  In brief: Because a Buddhist monk is not stopped in Thailand, Ajahn Brahm was able to walk into the autopsy room at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok.…

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  Actually one of these places I went to in Thailand. Because Thailand is a Buddhist country you can walk into the morgue because they won't stop a Buddhist monk you just go in and see what's going on in there (laughter). So, I remember the first It's true. One of the first places, I couldn't really believe this. This is a true story I am not making it up. I went into this autopsy room in Siriraj Hospital Bangkok, just opposite the river. Their main hospital, or one of the main hospitals in Bangkok; I went there very early, They hadn't started the autopsy yet, I was in the room by myself, they had these high windows and I looked at one of the windows, there was really something strange, in a place where you will usually expect a pot plant, there was a head! (laughter) And I thought this was a fake head some sort of model. I went there and poked it; it was actually a real head cut off. Just like in some monster movie. But there is was, I don't know whose it was but they just put it on a plate and it was on the window, in the sunshine. It's really weird (laughter)

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• Chanting for a dying mother in Singapore

  In brief: In Singapore a woman asks Ajahn Brahm to chant for her mother, just home from hospital and expected to die soon. After the chanting the…

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  I did some chanting for them the lady asked me to come even I was supposed to go to a funeral for somebody else say can you please child from my mom she's just come home from hospital and you know I think now may be the last time maybe looks like she's gonna die soon so can I come chant for her so I went to chant for this lady you know I've known a long time and apparently after chanting she got out of bed and started walking around another miracle that's not a miracle is uncertainty

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• “Please don't die during our retreat”

  In brief: At the start of the rains retreat Ajahn Brahm jokingly asks everyone not to die until October or November, since funerals break his…

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  I made an announcement last week please don't die during our retreat because if you do I have to come out of the retreat and do your funeral service for you and that breaks my meditation so just out of respect and out of kindness can you please delay your death and to the least know October or or even better November so of course there's a there's always karmic consequences when I say city jokes like that because on Monday I got an email one of my disciples died then he left it for one day and so all my plans of what I was supposed to do on Tuesday and Wednesday were thrown into turmoil as I had to go to Singapore for their funeral so on Tuesday morning at one o'clock in the morning I had to take the flight and I came back on Wednesday afternoon just you know 20 less than 24 hours in Singapore to help with the funeral service

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• The dreams that were right — until they weren't

  In brief: A fellow monk told Ajahn Brahm he had twice dreamed truly: a recurring dream of his sister drowning that let him save her at 16 or 17, and…

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  he'd always have this recurring dream he told me that his younger sister would fall into the swimming pool drown and die and he said one day he was just as a young 16 or 17 year old he was just sitting around the pool just doing nothing and then the dream which he had uh seen so often started to unfold it was exactly as he dreamed but because he remembered the dream and knew what was going to happen next he actually intervened and saved his sister's life he said it was weird but if he hadn't had that dream his sister would be dead and that gave him such confidence in dreams especially in those Vivid types of dreams that he believed in them except for once when he said he was maybe about 2122 and he was in New Zealand remember this was 30 40 years ago uh shows how old I am but this was a time when young people were really into smoking marijuana and he was in a house over in New Zealand with a few other young people you know sort of taking those recreational drugs and he had a dream he said many times that the New Zealand police came into the house and arrested everybody and he said he was kicking himself because he never took preventative action and it happened and he got deported and so he had two dreams he said which actually turned out to be true and he said the third dream which he had and this was the one he kept on telling me this was in 1974 when I became a monk and it was just the towards the end of the Vietnam War and the Viet Kon had taken over Vietnam patet La had taken over LA and the Karu had taken over Cambodia and our monasteries were very very close know to the border between Cambodia and L right in that sort of West northwest corner of Thailand and I remember looking at a map once and the distance from my Monastery in Thailand to Bangkok was twice as distance as it was to Hanoi we're much closer to Hanoi let alone the other sort of communist places and there was an evacuation plan which we had to register for our embassies because most western diplomats at the time subscribed to what was called the Domino Theory they thought once Vietnam LA and Cambodia fell tider would be next especially the Northeast where we were very close and so he thought he had this dream of the Communist soldiers invading that part of Thailand him running away across a pfield and got him shot in the back of the head he was so convinced of that dream he said that's how I'm going to die I know I'm going to die the Communists are going to invade and I'm going to be caught and killed cuz two out of two times he got it right that never ever happened you know he disrobed fell in love got married and one year after he got married he got killed in a head- on car crash in California so it never worked out

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