84. Things outside and in

The evening of April 2, 1981, after Luang Pu had returned from a ceremony in the palace and was resting at the royal monastic dwelling in Wat Bovorn, a high-ranking monk who was also a meditator came to visit and to converse with him about the Dhamma. His first question was this: “They say that a person who was a yakkha in a previous life, on returning to a human birth, can study magical formulae and be very powerful in whatever way he uses them. How true is that?”

Luang Pu sat right up and answered,

“I’ve never been interested in that sort of thing at all. But have you ever meditated to this point: hasituppapāda, the movement of the mind where it smiles on its own, without any intention to smile? It happens only in a noble one’s mind. It doesn’t happen in ordinary people, because it lies beyond the conditions of fabrication—free in and of itself.”