'Please tell Julie how much I love her'

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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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• “We love you, Dad”

  In brief: Two daughters sit holding their comatose father's hands in a Perth hospital. After his last breath he opens his eyes, sits up and looks at…

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  there's a person who comes here regular I'm not sure if they're here tonight they told me the story of they were with their father here in Perth he was dying and she was with her sister that was sitting on either side of the bed holding their father's hand he was in a coma hadn't sort of spoken for many many hours or a day or two I'm not sure and they were just waiting for him to die just waiting for that last breath to go out and not come in again holding his hand and of course you never know when that moment's going to happen I've been there with people and sometimes you're waiting there for hours and they seem as if their last breath and you think that's it and then suddenly they breathe in again and at this particular case it was his last breath he stopped breathing but then he opened his eyes and he leaned up from his bed and looked around at his two sisters on either two daughters on either side and they said that without any plan they said in perfect synchronicity we love you Dad and then he closed his eyes and passed away but what really would took their uh took them by surprise was that even though he was been in a coma for such a long time even though he was not supposed to be able to see or feel the last minute he did he looked them in the eye and they could speak to him the last words

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• “Steve, you can die”

  In brief: Visiting a dying man, Steve, Ajahn Brahm senses something is holding him back and asks his partner Jenny (present in the audience) whether…

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  This lady sitting in front of me who taught me something once when her husband died. I remember to this moment Jenny and I always will with Steve. When I came to see you Steve was dying but there was something stopping him and I told you 'have you given Steve permission to die?' Remember that time? And you did and it's one of those memorable experiences, she jumped up on the bed, hugged her partner whom she loved dearly and said 'Steve you can die, I give you permission to go'

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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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