About This Teaching
This Short describes how Ajahn Chah responded to questions about psychic powers. He saw no benefit in feeding people's appetite for such things, rarely mentioned them, and usually cut the questions short.
When someone asked whether being enlightened meant he could fly, he replied that dung beetles can fly too. He would turn the conversation back to the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause, its cessation and the path. When a schoolteacher asked about scriptural accounts of miraculous powers, he pointed to the forest and suggested talking instead about the tree stump the man was stubbing his toe on. Of the three kinds of miracle, his disciples valued his power of instruction.