Someone asked the teacher how to practice the "sense of the Buddha-body" he had mentioned earlier.

Wearing the Feeling That "We Are the Buddha Image, the Buddha Image Is Us" The teacher explained the practice: every time we meditate, we take on the feeling that we are the Buddha image and the Buddha image is us. He then told a story from more than twenty years ago, when he was teaching newly ordained monks in front of an ordination hall. During a morning break, two newly ordained monks were discussing this very practice — one asked the other whether he had tried it. The second replied that he had, and felt something, though not very clearly yet. The first monk then explained why he had asked: he had noticed the other's shadow cast on the pavement showed the outline of a lotus-bud finial appearing above it.

The teacher later shared this same story at a meditation center in the south of Thailand, before an evening session of practice. Afterward, one participant reported that even with the lights off, they could still see an image of the Buddha figure superimposed on the human body, sliding in and out three times, showing that it truly dwelled superimposed within the human body. The following Sunday morning, during the food offering to the Buddha, a practitioner of sixteen years' standing shared that this was their finest experience yet: while holding the thought "I am the Buddha image, the Buddha image is me," they saw themselves as the Buddha image, and saw a stream of merit flowing continuously through the Buddha-body into the human body. The teacher noted that such experiences are not limited to one person — many practitioners have had similar results, which tend to develop gradually, growing from one percent to two percent and onward with continued practice.

He explained the reasoning behind the practice: the Triple Gem residing at the center of our being wishes for us to become one with it, undivided. When we recite "sammā-arahaṃ," the Buddha image appears at our center and expands to overlay the human body. Taking on the feeling that we are the Buddha image, and the Buddha image is us, is meant to unite us with it as one, allowing it to refine and correct us with the fullest possible effect. We can hold this feeling whether standing, walking, sitting, or lying down, even in life's moments of crisis — imagining the head, face, shoulders, arms, and torso all as the clear, radiant, gentle, refined Dhamma-body. Simply doing this lets the stream of merit pour through us continuously; we appear luminous at the center of the Triple Gem, and it appears luminous at our own center, both of us shining together at the center of Nibbana.

How Reliable Is "Seeing With the Inner Eye"? A follow-up question was asked: what does it feel like to see things, both within and beyond ordinary perception, that most people cannot see?

The teacher answered that this depends on the degree of purity involved — what one sees may not always be real, so there is no way to confirm whether a vision is true or false. He recounted that once even the great teacher had received a case study sent for his review; sitting with the image that appeared, he felt something was uncertain, unsure whether what he perceived was accurate. So he rested, fell briefly asleep, woke refreshed, and sat again to reconsider it. That even the great teacher himself had to verify things this way shows that what is seen may not be true — one should never believe everything seen at face value.

He explained that seeing by only a small degree of brightness — the light of five or ten "suns," so to speak — can easily become a distorted, illusory image, because impurity itself is capable of generating images. Such images born of distortion behave like a video, not a still picture, scripting whatever story the viewer wishes to see — whether recalling a past life or visiting Nibbana, impurity can fabricate any such scene. There is no way to tell whether it is true or false. Khun Yay once taught that anyone who truly wishes to study the Dhammakaya path must see suns filling the entire sky in order to perceive things exactly as they truly are — meaning brightness at the level of millions of suns, not merely five or ten. Even at that level, the light would be soft on the eyes like moonlight, not searing like ordinary sunlight.

For this reason, what is seen cannot be taken as anything essential in itself — the only real path forward is to keep cultivating purity. If someone claims to be able to see past lives or similar things, one may look into it out of curiosity, but should not place too much faith in it.