Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu

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 throughout the area. During the day, we’d burn the ritual objects used for worshiping 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 not the sort of food they would eat. It would be far better to make merit and dedicate it to the spirits. If they didn’t accept that, then drive them away with the authority of the Dhamma.

So I ordered the people to burn all the ancestral shrines.

When some of the villagers began to lose nerve for fear that there would be nothing to protect them in the future, I wrote down the chant for spreading good will, and gave a copy to everyone in the village, guaranteeing that nothing would happen. I’ve since learned that all of the area around the ancestral shrines is now planted with crops, and that the spot in the forest where the spirits were said to be fierce is now a new village.

******

From The Autobiography of Phra Ajaan Lee, translated by Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu
https://www.dhammatalks.org/books/AutobioAjaanLee/Contents.html