In Thailand, inseparable couples who love each other very much often go and make merit together. Customarily, the power of merit performed can usually help one to fulfil one’s wishes.
That is why we adithan after we have completed a meritorious act of dana or pawana.
So these couples would often pray to tie their fates with one another, regardless of whatever world they will be born into or whichever future life they would be reborn to live. But this is not an aspiration or determination (Adhiṭṭhāna) based on right view of impermanence that all things rise and fall in accordance with cause and effect.
Luang Pu Doo forbade his disciples from adhitthaning in this way. Luang Pu advised that as time passes, each individual may develop differently. One may become more mature and spiritually developed than the other. Therefore a married couple shouldn’t be seen as equals in terms of the Dhamma.
When a married couple finished making merit with Luang Pu and were preparing to adithan, Luang Pu spoke up, “Husband and wife don’t have to pray to be together. Because such a determination will pull both of you together. If one can go and the other can’t, then both of you will be stuck together.”
Luang Pu is saying that as practitioners aiming towards enlightenment either in this life or perhaps many lifetimes later, we should not be making determinations that may manifest as obstacles to our Dhamma practice in the future, increasing our attachments and burdens in Samsara.
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