Venerable Ajaan Mun and the foregoing Ācariya both said the same thing about the Devatās in that they have characters which are quite individual, in the same way that people do. Some of them liked to hear the Dhammacakkapavattana
Sutta, some the Karaṇīyamettā Sutta, some liked to hear the Abhidhamma — in
other words “Kusalā dhamma, akusalā dhammā...” which the Lord Buddha taught to his Mother in the Tāvatiṁsa Heaven. Some liked to hear the Aparihāniyadhamma
Sutta and some the Mettābrahmavihāra Sutta, in fact more of them wanted to
hear this Sutta than any other. The different groups, levels and realms vari- ously liked different Suttas depending on their individual characteristics and there were so many different ones which they asked to hear. However, I will not attempt to make a list of them, for I have not come across nor looked into all the Suttas which the Devatās wanted to hear, so I cannot let the reader know about them, and I must ask you to forgive me for this. But wherever this
Ācariya went to stay in the hills and forests the Devatās always liked to go and
associate with him in the same way as they did with his Ācariya — Venerable Ajaan Mun.
Sometimes the Ācariya stayed with the Rishi hermits who practised their way in caves in various locations far away from the turbulence of society, and generally four or five kilometres or more from the nearest village, and deep in the hills where nobody goes. For these Rishis do not have the tradi- tion of going piṇḍapāta as the Bhikkhus do and they cook and eat their meals themselves, alone.
When the Ācariya went to stay there in a cave close by, he went to the Rishi for piṇḍapāta, and that day the Rishi cooked curried beans and gave them to him with great joy and gladness of heart. The manner in which this
Ācariya related this story was very funny but we will not elaborate it here. The Ācariya said he was very hungry and tired having walked three days through
wild country and he had eaten very little while travelling. For in walking through the forests and over hills he came across the occasional small village composed of only three or four houses where some forest dwellers lived who knew nothing about Buddhism, and he had to rely on those people to give him enough food to keep him going. So both because he had walked very far and also gone up and down many hills, his body was quite exhausted and he wanted food much more than was normal for him. So as soon as the Rishi had finished cooking the curried beans and given them to him he ate the lot until his bowl was clean, both the curried beans and the rice, for that day he left nothing, not even any bits sticking to his bowl. But having eaten, instead of feeling strength returning to his body, he felt increasingly weak and tired and he just wanted to lie down and sleep, for the food that the Rishi had given
him was quite delicious. Meanwhile the Rishi was very pleased and happy to see him eat all of it, for what he had done seemed to be absolutely suitable to the occasion, without any thought of the situation and what might come of it. As soon as the Ācariya saw that his condition was not good he went to a place where he could walk caṅkama and walked, until the afternoon after which he rested in meditation practice.
While he was sitting practising samādhi, his citta dropped into a state of calm and he heard the sound of gongs and drums of the Devatās who were expressing their appreciation for the fruits of mettā which they had received from the Ācariya. They were also glad about the gift of food which the Rishi had made to him when he was very hungry, for the merit and good which he had made was exceedingly great and beyond calculation. So these Devatās were overflowing with delight and thanksgiving (anumodanā), for it is very rare that a “holy” man, complete in moral behaviour and Dhamma who is worthy of respect and veneration and makes one glad at heart, should come and favour them. They were truly glad about the fruits which had come from him so they all came to express their satisfaction and thanksgiving and asked that they may share in this merit by their act of thanksgiving.
This was how the Devatās who lived round those hills all expressed their gladness at the gift which the Rishi had made through the Ācariya who had been so hungry and had eaten a lot. They came so that he should be a witness to their gladness and they also asked him to tell the Rishi about this and to express their thanks (anumodanā) to him. So early that evening, he took the opportunity to talk Dhamma with the Rishi, and speaking in an indirect manner he said:
“This afternoon I dreamed that a great company of Devatās came beating gongs and drums to give thanks for the great merit which you made in giving food to me this morning, and they also asked for their share of merit which comes from the thanksgiving. You must have gained a lot of merit for all these Devatās to come and give thanks and to ask for a share in it as well.” Hearing this, the Rishi put his hands together and raised them above his head in appreciation and agreement with the Devatās, and he expressed his admira- tion of the Ācariya, saying:
“You must be very skilled in the ways of intuitive knowledge (ñāṇa); for if you were able to hear the sounds of the Devatās showing their appreciation by this thanksgiving while you were merely sleeping in the middle of the day, how much more skilled you must be at other times when you are not asleep. I have no doubt about this for I have had great reverence and faith in Venerable Ācariya since I first saw you, and for this reason I have done whatever I can for you gladly and willingly, so when I saw you eat a lot of that food my gladness and joy was boundless. Can you tell me where these
Devatās live so that they were able to know that I had given food to you and
then to make their thanksgiving, and also to ask for a share in the merit from me? And why have I never seen them display themselves all the time I have been living here?”
The Ācariya answered:
“These are the Rukkha Devas (Devas who dwell in trees) and they live not very far from us. This morning when I was doing the thanksgiving,
“Yathā... Sabbītiyo...” they also heard it and responded with their “Sādhu”; but
if we are not aware of them it seems as if there are none of them anywhere around here at all.”
The Rishi was very interested in the story of the Devatās coming to make thanksgiving for the “dāna” which he had given and asked the Ācariya to tell him more about it. The Ācariya then devised a way to get this Rishi to practise meditation, and also, so that he himself may have time for his own meditation practice without having external things coming to bother him too much. So he said to the Rishi:
“In order to see the Pretas, Ghosts, Devaputtas or Devadhītā you must look with the internal eye, the eye of the heart; and in order to be able to know all these other forms of existence with the internal eye you must be diligent in practising meditation. Examine the thirty two parts of the body in detail with wisdom. And when you do samādhi meditation practice, keep your attention on your breath, or on the word “buDDho”, just that, and don’t
let it get caught up with anything else. When your citta becomes calm by either of these methods of meditation, you will be able to see the Devatā for yourself without having to bother other people by asking about them.
But if you are lazy in doing your meditation practice you will not see any
Devatās, nor will your heart become calm and peaceful.”
“To see the Devas, who have Deva–bodies, you must see with the Deva heart — in other words, you must use samādhi meditation as the means of doing this. If one does not have the means of doing this, there is no way in which one can know or see the beings of these realms.”
After giving this explanation, the Rishi felt eager to practise this way so that he may come to know and see the Devatās. Then this Ācariya took his leave and left him so that he could get on with his own practice. Late that night the Devatās came to visit him to ask about the Rishi and his desire to know where the Devatās lived, about his desire to practise meditation so as to know about the Devatās and also how the Ācariya had taught him. So the Ācariya then explained to them what he had taught the Rishi.
The Ācariya did not stay very long with the Rishi even though he had such great faith in this Ācariya and was also very attached to him and did not want him to go.
ONcethIs ācarIyawasstayINgIN a certaINplace INthefOrest with two
other Bhikkhus. Later on he heard from the villagers that close to where the Bhikkhus were staying, they had buried the body of a woman who had died in an abnormal way — the villagers called it a “violent death”. This woman who lived in the forest was pregnant and she was ignorant of the necessary care and attention required in giving birth to a child and she was left to her own devices and died in a sorry state. This is what they told the Ācariya, but to start with, none of the Bhikkhus knew about this woman.
When the Ācariya practised his meditation, the ghost of this woman came to bother him nearly every night. He explained that as he understood it, ghosts and people have very similar characteristics in regard to the sexual cravings that exist in the hearts of all beings in the world. (The writer apologises for bringing in this subject matter, but it is necessary for understanding the true basis of what happened.) He said that he saw this quite clearly when he went to stay and practise meditation in that forest with the two other Bhikkhus. As soon as night had come, whenever he entered into meditation he would see
the ghost of this dead woman coming to him and displaying all the suggestive things of her sex to him all the time. But his citta was too strong for her and she could not do anything to overcome him. Sometimes this ghost appeared to become much more active than normal, almost as if it was going to try and rape him to satisfy her heart’s craving, but she had no way to get at him. He developed mettā in his citta toward her but she would not accept it, for all she wanted was the satisfaction of this emotional state of craving (ārammaṇa). When he questioned this ghost, she answered quite truthfully without any deception, about how and why she had died, which was later confirmed by the villagers.
It was after this that she tried unsuccessfully to do these things to him that he asked her what had happened to her. She told him that when she was alive as a human being her marriage had broken up and her husband left her for someone else. This had upset her very badly and when the time came to deliver her child there was nobody to look after her and give her medical at- tention. It was then that she died with her child still unborn. This was the same story that the villagers later told him. In fact he asked the villagers about this ghost because of its improper behaviour and because he would always see it when he entered samādhi.
He said that this ghost was quite vicious. When it could not get its way with the Ācariya it turned its attention to the two other Bhikkhus by acting as if it would rape them while they were asleep. They shouted out in their sleep, so loud that he could hear clearly what they said:
“You are a woman and I am a Bhikkhu, how can you expect me to act like a lay person — I don’t want it — you must go away now quickly before you make worse kamma than you already have and go down to hell. Venerable Ajaan! Help me! This ghost of a woman is trying to rape me! Come quickly! Help!”
This is the kind of thing they were saying, but very loud, even though they were still asleep. Like someone shouting out something to let us know. The
Ācariya who was just coming out of his meditation practice after contending
with the ghost, turned his attention out beyond himself and heard these strange noises quite clearly. So he quickly went to the Bhikkhu who had called for help and woke him up. When he was asked what had happened, he said that in his sleep he saw a pregnant woman coming towards him as though she would rape him, and she would not listen whatever he said to her so he called to Venerable
Ajaan for help and he was woken just in time. The Ācariya said that he had never come across anything like this before and the whole incident was very strange. The two Bhikkhus both had the same kind of dream, but not on the same night. And both of them called for help to the Ācariya when they became afraid that the ghost would make them lose their chastity (Brahmacariyā) as Bhikkhus, and they called out loud and clearly. One night one of them called out, the next night the other one did the same thing and it went on like this. The Ācariya was also disturbed in his meditation practice, but the two other Bhikkhus were disturbed almost every night.
The Ācariya said that the problem with this kind of madness is that it will not let its obsessed victims give way and receive any of their share of blessings and mettā. They are so completely obsessed by their desire that they know no shame, which makes their thoughts go into strange and wrong ways, and this is the case quite regardless of their realm, world or form of existence. If such a shameless obsession should take possession of any being anywhere, that realm or world is bound to be of a nature similar to that in which the ghost of this woman lived and behaved in that way towards the Bhikkhus. I asked him:
“When the ghost of that woman was acting in bad, improper ways, what did it actually do?”
The Ācariya replied in a manner as if he was still angry with the ghost: “Do you want me to display everything in detail to you — like a boat on dry land? What I have already told you is enough to make me want to bury my head in the ground and I cannot go and reveal everything like someone taking off all his clothes. I am not shameless like that ghost who can speak without any sense of what is seemly and proper; and is it not enough simply to use the word “rape”? What else should one say? Surely everyone should understand what that means quite clearly, whether it concerns a ghost or a human being.”
I then asked another question:
“Did the other two Bhikkhus not know about the ghost from their
samādhi meditation? If so, why should this ghost go and bother them when
it was time for sleep — when one wants no pleasure more than a good sleep?”
The Ācariya replied:
“They did not say whether they knew about it or not; all they did was to shout out in the middle of the night so that I could not stand it and had to go quickly to help them. When they woke and I asked them about it, all they said was that the ghost was trying to rape them.”
“How long did you stay in that place?”
“We stayed there for several months and the reason why I decided to leave the place was because the other two Bhikkhus did not want to stay there. They said that they could not stand this ghost’s persistent efforts to have its way with them, so we had to go elsewhere.”
“Does not the ghost which caused all this trouble belong to the realm of
Pretas, who should be capable of accepting shared merit (puñña)? Why then
was it not glad to accept its share of merit when the merit of someone’s good actions are shared out to other beings?”
“I really do not know what group of beings it belongs to, in fact all I know is that it acted only in its own mad way, having no interest in anything else at all.”
After this he smiled and said further:
“I was sorry for the other two Bhikkhus who were still very young. They practised the way well and they were very intent on Dhamma, but they could not relax and stay there with an easy heart because of this thing which came to trouble them. At night they seemed to be very uneasy with thoughts of “dukkha” and desire in both of them. When it was time to sleep they both were afraid of the ghost and how it may harm them in the same way as it had already done so. So they did not want to go on staying there and we had to leave.”
I asked:
“Does this sort of thing happen only to women, or can men also become like this when they die?”
The Ācariya replied:
“Let us just think in terms of sexual craving (rāga–taṇhā), which not only