apparitions, and his fear was the outcome of this self-deception.
The misery he suffered arose from such faith in this delusion that a
mere dog, harmlessly scrounging for food, almost became a matter
of life and death.
Recalling how deluded he had been for so long, trusting
the self-deceptions that his mind constantly churned out, he
thought:
“Although they’ve always been at work, this is the first time
they have brought me so close to catastrophe. Dhamma
teaches us that saññã is the master of deception,^13 but
until now I’ve never clearly understood what that means.
Only now, inhaling the stench of my own living death, do
I understand its significance: My fear of ghosts is nothing
more than saññã’s deceptive trickery. From now on, saññã
will never again trick me as it has in the past. I must stay
put here in this cemetery until the ‘master of deception’ is
dead and buried, so that the specter of ghosts will not con-
tinue to haunt me in the future. Only then will I agree to
leave here. Now it’s my turn to torture to death this cun-
ning, deceitful conjurer, then cremate its stinking corpse
like that fleshly corpse I’ve just seen cremated here. Deal-
ing a decisive blow to saññã’s insidious trickery – this is the
only pressing matter in my life right now.”The monk took up this challenge with such earnest resolve that
whenever saññã caused him to suspect a ghost was lurking some-
where around him, he immediately went to that spot, exposing
the deception. Forgoing sleep, he kept up this vigil throughout