Q42. How much interest do psychic powers deserve?
~ By Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
First of all, we shall say something about the iddhis themselves. The word iddhi means ‘power.’ It was originally an everyday word, a household term applied to things with the ability to promote success in perfectly ordinary ways. Anything with the ability to promote success was called an iddhi. Later, the meaning was extended to cover success in marvelous, miraculous ways, until we come across the sort of iddhis that are exclusively mental phenomena. Because they are mental, they have productive and beneficial properties that render them far more marvelous and wide-ranging than anything physical. They are like our labor-saving devices. Nowadays we have bulldozers that can build roads and so on. These too would have been called iddhis. But these are physical marvels. The iddhis we are concerned with here have to do with mind; they are mental, not physical.
Exponents of iddhis (psychic powers) have trained their minds in ways that they can cause other people to experience whatever the exponents wish them to feel. They can cause others to see things with their own eyes just as someone with such abilities wishes them to see, to hear clearly and distinctly such sounds as he wishes them to hear, to smell just as he wishes them to smell, to experience taste sensations as if they are really experiencing them with the tongue, and to feel softness, hardness, and other such tactile stimuli as if they are felt through the skin. The process can then be extended until the demonstrator is able to cause the other person to experience fear, love, or any mental state without realizing why. The iddhis are thus extremely useful and quite wonderful.
However, this kind of mental influence doesn’t produce physical things. The psychic powers are incapable of creating real physical things of any practical value. They alone can’t create dwellings or huts to live in, or rice, fish, or food to eat, so that those with iddhis might live without any problems. Such practical things can’t happen. The objects appear to exist or are experienced as existing in eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, or mind for only as long as the iddhi is being demonstrated. Thereafter they disappear. So the iddhis aren’t capable of building huts or temples by themselves. There definitely have to be lay supporters to build and offer them. For instance, Jetavana and Veluvana – famous graves given to monastics for dwelling – had to be built and offered to the Buddha.* And several times the Buddha went without food because of famine and had to eat rice set out as horse feed, and only a handful of it a day.
This serves to remind us that the material and mental are two different matters. It is possible to demonstrate iddhis of both types. The Buddha didn’t deny mental iddhis, but he strongly disapproved of demonstrating them because they are mere illusions. He therefore prohibited the demonstration of them by bhikkhus, and he himself refrained from it. We don’t come across it in the Tipiṭaka that the Buddha demonstrated iddhis. The accounts of the Buddha demonstrating iddhis occur only in commentaries and other later works. Consequently, we may be skeptical of such accounts – though really there’s no need for us to judge them true or false.
The Buddha once said, ‘The various iddhis that are demonstrated – flying through the air, becoming invisible, clairaudience, clairvoyance, and the like – are sāsava and upadhika.’ Sāsava means ‘associated with or involving āsavas’ (the influxes leading to attachment to sensual pleasure, becoming, views, and ignorance). In other words, iddhis performed with grasping and clinging, or motivated by grasping and clinging, are called sāsava. The performance of upadhika-iddhis is motivated by upadhis, which are things acquired and subject to clinging. They are likewise iddhis motivated by attachment. They are demonstrated by a mind that grasps and clings. Iddhis of this sort are sāsava and upadhika.
Now let’s turn our attention to the opposite kind of iddhi – anāsava and anupadhika, not mixed up with fermenting influxes and acquisitions of clinging – namely the ability to control one’s own mind at will. We shall take as a particular example the subject of foulness (paṭikkūla). Here one causes oneself to see foul things as disagreeable, to see attractive things as disagreeable, and to see everything as foul and disagreeable; or to see everything as agreeable; then to see everything as neither of these, as neither attractive nor foul. This is one example demonstrating the ability to control mind so completely that mindfulness, clear awareness, and equanimity can be maintained in the presence of sense objects – shapes and colors, flavors, odors, sounds, and tactile objects – that might concoct mind. Having mindfulness, ready awareness, and equanimity is an iddhi. It is an iddhi of the type called anāsava (free of āsava, undefiled) and anupadhika (free of upadhi, neither grasped nor a basis for grasping). These are the things called the iddhis and how we ought to view them.
The real iddhis that are demonstrated in order to cause psychic miracles, the sāsava and upadhika types, are still difficult to perform. To master them involves much practice, which is organized into a great system. They can be accomplished, genuinely achieved and demonstrated, by only a very few people. There is a spurious variety, too, based on pure deception, sheer trickery, sometimes involving the use of incantations.
There are people who can demonstrate what are apparently genuine iddhis, but to acquire those skills is very difficult and requires arduous training. By contrast, the anāsava- and anupadhika-iddhis lie within the capabilities of most people. This sort is worth thinking about. As it is, we are interested in the sort of iddhis we can’t perform but aren’t interested in the most beneficial ones, those we can practice ourselves. These things called iddhis certainly have a strange attraction for us, but our thinking on the subject needs to be completely revised.
(*) In Thailand, iddhis are most often associated with monks, some of whom benefit financially and even create scandals.
(From “Buddha-Dhamma for Inquiring Minds”)
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Buddha-Dhamma for Students (title of original translation) was composed of two talks given by Ajahn Buddhadāsa in January 1966 to students at Thammasat University, Bangkok. It was translated from the Thai by Rod Bucknell, and revised in 2018 by Santikaro Upasaka. To read/download as free ebook (pdf).
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For all English retreat talks, visit Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu.
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Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives D-106