DEDICATING MERIT

 DEDICATING MERIT

"There was a woman who came to meditate at the monastery several years back when Ajaan Fuang was still alive. She was a friend of one of the women who cooked in the kitchen. And the woman in the kitchen told Ajaan Fuang that this friend had a particular problem. Every time she tried to meditate, her body would start shaking uncontrollably.

So the night she meditated with us in the chedi, sure enough, she started shaking. Ajaan Fuang had a student who was quite psychic and he told her to look into what was happening. She saw two beings behind the woman, shaking her. And to make a very long story short, she found out these had been the parents of this woman in a previous lifetime. She had killed them in that lifetime — this was a very long time ago — and they didn’t like the idea that by meditating she might get out of their grasp.

So Ajaan Fuang’s student asked them, “What do you want? What could she do that would satisfy you?” And then they said, “If she could help build a Buddha image and dedicate the merit to us, that would satisfy us.” It so happened that we were building a Buddha image at the monastery at the time. So Ajaan Fuang told the student, “You can’t say anything to her about this. Otherwise, it’ll look like we’re trying to squeeze money out of her.” But a couple of years later, someone else was building a Buddha image and she participated in that — and the shaking stopped.

We don’t know who we’ve got in our past or what we’ve done in our past. So it’s always a good idea to dedicate merit just in case, to pay off some old debts."

~ Thanissaro Bhikkhu "Dedicating Merit"