A practitioner writes: “I’ve never heard any Buddhist teacher talk about protection from beings. There is a story in the Pali Canon of when a group of monks were meditating in a haunted forest and were getting attacked by demonic type beings, and the Buddha taught them loving kindness and compassion meditations, and these beings were transformed by these meditations.” Is that all the Buddha was doing to stay safe? Will this work for the average person?

We have said before that the teachings of the Buddha have been somewhat altered through the ages and not fully understood, and are not the be-all and end-all of understanding of the workings of the divine realm and how best to interact in partnership. His perspective put a premium on the self and how to govern and manipulate one’s own energy which is only half of the equation. So here as well the advice "to meet an adversary with loving kindness" is well‑intentioned and, in fact, is the very antidote needed to parry any adversary. The problem is: "Can this be done fully and effectively by even the divine human in isolation through their own devices?" We would say in most cases with a high-level opponent it is unlikely to prevail over time with repeated attacks, in particular. For that, divine support is needed so there is a time for self-reliance and there is a time to bring in the bigger guns, so to speak. This is necessary because humans are in an impaired state of being and even though capable of lofty thoughts, they are not capable of lofty levels of energy creation and deployment, so their energetic tools will be relatively meager. It is simply a consequence of the current state of being within the physical environment of limitation and does not reflect their true light being origin. So there is no fault and no shame in needing divine partnership. It is your birthright and a natural alliance you have while in the light. Even as a full-fledged light being, you do not do everything on your own, much is done in partnership with Creator at all times, in all sorts of ways and circumstances. It is just that the relative level of involvement, the ratio of contribution from the respective parties, will need less of Creator’s support for the light being but much more so for the physical human because of the state of limitation within the human physical environment. Getting divine help is bringing in loving kindness, so the solution proposed by the Buddha is the divine choice and reflects divine wisdom, but keep in mind he was a quite advanced being spiritually who was in divine alignment, and naturally was calling on the divine through his inner perception of how he went about governing his own energy, knowing there was something beyond the self intuitively, and he thought of it as a kind of local part of the being but was truly the higher self and resided within the divine realm. He was aware of this part of himself and thought of it simply as his own energy, knowing it could be summoned and put to work on his behalf. So he, in effect, was calling on the divine instinctively, not realizing the full dimension and reality of the interchange, and this is indeed misleading and cannot be done by most people who do not work at developing belief in the divine and a divine working relationship, formally and consciously, to carry within the needed level of intention and belief quotients.