Stories about afterlife
3 Buddhist wisdom stories about afterlife from Buddhist teachers, each linked to the original talk.
- Peter already knew — Mom had just visitedStory · Ajahn Brahm
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, smiling, giving love one last time across…
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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
- The man who walked straight past the judgeStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: From a German book a German-born monk translated aloud: a seven- or eight-year-old boy has a near-death experience, walking through a forest to a shed where a man checks a book —…
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A long time ago, there was a book coming around our monastery down in Serpentine. I don't know if it's still there. It was in German, it'd be great if it was translated into English. I don't know if it's been done. But one of our German monks, a German-born monk, he read it out to me in translation. It was a story of a young boy in Germany who had an out-of-the-body experience, just floating out of your body, near-death experience, he was only about seven or eight years of age. And the reason I remembered it was because of what this little boy learned from that out-of-the-body experience. He was walking through a forest, in Germany, forests are really important to people, so they live in the forest, their culture is born out of the forest. So that he was walking through a forest, having temporarily died, and he came to like a barn, like a shed, and it's typical the way that some people perceive that time when you left your body at the near-death or death, that he came to this guy who asked what his name was, and the guy looked in some book, they always say it's a book, these days if young people die, they find he just logs into a computer and checks your name, looked into a book, his name wasn't there, so he said, no you're not supposed to be dead, you'd better go back. But he said that before you go back, you can actually see how this all works. And so the next person who came to see if he really deserved to die or not was a farmer. And when the farmer came up, you know the guy, what's your name, oh yeah, your time's up, time you're dead, but said the guy who was with the book, and he said, have you ever killed anything, any animals? he said, oh no, no, no, maybe one or two, but no more than that. And the guy looked at this little kid and said, you see, even though he's dead, he still lies through his teeth, he was a farmer, he killed many animals. But as they were just talking to this farmer to see what he thought, where he is gonna go.. there was another man walked right past the shed, right past, and went up to what the little kid thought was heaven. And the kid said to the guy, aren't you going to stop him and ask him what he's been doing? And that's when this judge told this little kid, throughout that man's whole life, he hasn't judged anybody, therefore, we're not going to judge him.
- The polka-dot bow tieStory · Ajahn Brahm
In brief: A Kalgoorlie builder dying of cancer comes to the monastery for counselling about death, dressed as always in thongs, shorts and a singlet. After his closed-coffin funeral, his…
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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.