The shire ranger's mother at the foot of the bed

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• Peter already knew — Mom had just visited

  In brief: Peter in Australia answers the phone: sister says Mom's dead. He already knows and is not upset — Mom's mind-made form had just visited,…

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  having a cup of tea, Peter, and then telephone rang. Answered the telephone. Good. He says, "Sister, Peter, we've got some bad news for you." Yeah, I know. Mom's dead. What? How do you know? How come you're not upset? That's when Peter told his sister that his mom had just visited him. It's important you can't do that in just 1 second all the way from UK. It's a mile away in Australia in 1 second or less than that. He just was there, clear, just smiling, giving the love to him one last time

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• The wife who came back for the will

  In brief: A Thai woman who never trusted her Chinese husband asks Ajahn Brahm to do her funeral and pay for it, in return leaving her assets to the…

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  there was this this Thai lady married to a Chinese man and she never trusted her husband at all. So much so she asked me a bra can you please uh do the funeral for me and pay for it and in return we'll I'll dedicate uh you know my assets is not that much my assets to the Buddhist society and I told them at the time I can't do that I can't do deals as a monk but I'll give it to our committee and they said yeah this is a nice little earner you know they're paying for funerals a few thousand dollars but the what would you get from the inheritance or from the will be worth much more than that. So we signed off on that and I did a funeral for them. Then after the funeral was finished that uh I did ask the widow George said have you got the the will said no I can't find it it's disappeared and I didn't want to harass him so just left it be. Then one morning that's when he came to monastery very early in the morning. George, I've never seen a man of any tradition so frightened. He said, "AJ," he came in a taxi all the way from, I think, Mlands all the way to Serpentine really early in the morning. He said, "AJ, can I give you this?" What is it? He says, "It's the will. Here, take it now, please. Quick, now." And what happened? Last night, my wife came as a ghost. George, George, you know where that will is. Take her to Ajam Brahm now. He was so scared. He was scared of her when she was alive. She was doubly scared. No, she was dead. So sometimes that's what you have to do. You just she was making sure her husband did the right thing and then after he did the right thing, then she could disappear.

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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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• 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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