..續本文上一頁ing very well. My mind could settle down to a very refined level, and one very strange thing that had never happened before was beginning to happen: When my mind was really good and quiet, knowledge would suddenly come to me. For example, even though I had never studied Pali, I could now translate most of the chants I had memorized: most of the Buddhaguna, for instance, the Cula Paritta and the Abhidhamma Sankhepa. It seemed that I was becoming fairly expert in the Dhamma. If there was anything I wanted to know, all I had to do was make my mind very still, and the knowledge would come to me without my having to think over the matter. When this happened, I went to consult Ajaan Kongma. He explained to me, "The Buddha never studied how to write books or give sermons from anyone else. He first practiced meditation and the knowledge arose within his heart. Only then did he teach the Dhamma that has been copied down in the scriptures. So the way you”ve come to know within yourself like this isn”t wrong." Hearing this, I felt extremely pleased.

　　At the end of the rains, I thought of going to see my father again, because I felt that there was still a lot of unfinished business at home. Setting out on foot, I reached Baan Noan Daeng (RedHill Village), where I stayed at the ancestral spirit shrine. When the village people found me alone in the forest there, they sent word to my father. Early the next morning he came to see me, having set out from home in the middle of the night. He had prepared food for me, as best he knew how, but I couldn”t eat it, not even to please him. I was sorry I couldn”t, but I was now following the monastic discipline strictly — and it”s a matter that should be followed strictly: the rule against eating flesh from an animal killed specifically for the sake of feeding a monk. Afterwards, whenever I thought about it, I”d start feeling so sorry for my father that tears would come to my eyes. When he saw that his son the monk wouldn”t eat the food he had prepared, he took it off and ate it himself.

　　When he had finished, I followed him back to my home village, where this time I stayed first in the cemetery, and then later in another spot in the forest where the spirits were said to be very fierce. I stayed there for weeks, delivering sermons to people who came from many of the surrounding villages, and I did away with a lot of their mistaken beliefs and practices: belief in sorcery, the worship of demons and spirits, and the use of various spells that Buddhism calls "bestial knowledge." I helped wipe out a good number of the fears my friends and relatives in the village had concerning the spirits in the ruins near the village and the spirits in the spot where I was staying. We exorcised them by reciting Buddhist chants and spreading thoughts of good will and loving kindness throughout the area. During the day, we”d burn the ritual objects used for worshipping spirits. Some days there”d be nothing but smoke the whole day long. I taught the people in the village to take refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, to recite Buddhist chants and to meditate, instead of getting involved with spirits and demons.

　　There was another practice I had seen a lot of in the past that struck me as pointless, and so we figured out a way to wipe it out: the belief that the ancestral spirits in the village had to eat animal flesh every year. Once a year, when the season came around, each household would have to sacrifice a chicken, a duck or a pig. Altogether this meant that in one year hundreds of living creatures had to die for the sake of the spirits, because there would also be times when people would make sacrifices to cure an illness in the family. All of this struck me as a senseless waste. If the spirits really did exist, that”s n…

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