In his early years of practice, Ãcariya Mun often wandered dhutanga in the company of Ãcariya Sao,18 comforted in the knowledge that he had a good, experienced teacher to lend him support. But when he asked his teacher to advise him on specific problems arising in his meditation, Ãcariya Sao invariably replied:“My experiences in meditation are quite different from yours. Your citta is so adventurous, tending always toward extremes. One moment it soars into the sky, only to plunge deep into the earth the next. Then, after diving to the ocean floor, it again soars up to walk meditation high in the sky. Who could possibly keep up with your citta long enough to find a solution? I advise you to investigate these matters for yourself and find your own solutions.” Ãcariya Sao never gave him enough concrete advice to really help him, so Ãcariya Mun was forced to solve his own problems. Sometimes, he nearly died before discovering a way past some of the more intractable problems he faced.

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Ãcariya Mun described his teacher as someone with a smooth, serene temperament who inspired deep devotion. A rather strange feature of Ãcariya Sao’s practice was his tendency to levitate while in samãdhi, his body hovering quite noticeably above the floor. At first, doubtful that his body was indeed floating, he opened his eyes to see for himself. As soon as his eyes opened, concern about the condition of his body caused his citta to withdraw from samãdhi. He promptly fell back to the floor, landing hard on his buttocks which was sore and bruised for many days. In truth, his body did float about three feet above the floor. But by opening his eyes to check, he lost the mindfulness needed to maintain his citta in samãdhi. Withdrawing suddenly from samãdhi caused him to come crashing to the floor, like any other object dropped from a height. Practicing samãdhi later and feeling his body levitate again, he kept mindfulness firmly focused within that state of samãdhi, and then, carefully opened his eyes to look at himself. It was obvious to him then that he did levitate. This time, however, he didn’t fall back to the floor, for mindfulness was present to maintain total concentration.

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This experience taught Ãcariya Sao a valuable lesson about himself. Yet being an exceptionally careful, meticulous person, he wasn’t entirely convinced. So he took a small object, inserted it into the underside of the thatched roof in his hut, and continued to meditate. When he felt his body beginning to float again, he firmly focused his citta in samãdhi, and he was able to float upward until he reached that small object in the thatch. Drawing level with it, he slowly reached out and very mindfully took it in his hand so that he could bring it back down by means of samãdhi. This meant that once he had it in his grasp, he gradually withdrew from samãdhi to the point where his body could slowly, and safely, descend to the floor – a point still short of complete withdrawal from samãdhi. Experimenting like this, he became convinced of his ability to levitate, though this did not occur every time he entered samãdhi.

From the beginning of his practice to the end of his life, Ãcariya Sao’s citta tended to have this smooth, imperturbable quality; in sharp contrast to the wholly adventurous nature that characterized Ãcariya Mun’s citta. Unlike him, Ãcariya Sao was not so motivated to live dangerously, seeking adventure; nor did he tend to perceive the variety of unusual phenomena that Ãcariya Mun invariably did.

Ãcariya Mun told us that, once, in ages past, Ãcariya Sao had resolved to become a Paccekabuddha.19 Intensifying his efforts at meditation caused him to recollect his longtime resolution, and his lingering attachment to that goal made him reluctant to strive for Nibbãna in the present. It soon became apparent that this vow would block any attempt to realize Nibbãna in his lifetime; therefore, he immediately decided to renounce the old vow. In its place, he resolved to attain Nibbãna as soon as possible. He became determined to reach this goal within his present lifetime in order to avoid the misery of being reborn in the future.

Having forsaken his original vow, and thus, unhindered by previous commitments, his meditation practice progressed smoothly until one day he finally reached the Land of Ultimate Happiness that he had been aiming for. However, his teaching skill was very limited, probably due to a natural predisposition toward becoming a Paccekabuddha: someone who has no inclination to teach others although he is able to fully enlighten himself. Furthermore, the fact that he could so easily give up his original resolve and then achieve his new goal meant that his previous vow had not yet matured to the stage of being irreversible.

Ãcariya Mun related that in ages past he had made a similar resolution – in his case, a solemn vow to become a Buddha. As with Ãcariya Sao, intensifying his efforts at meditation caused Ãcariya Mun to recollect this long-standing intention, and this underlying attachment made him reluctant to strive for the attainment of Nibbãna in his present life. Ãcariya Mun renounced his vow to be a Buddha only after he began practicing dhutanga kammaååhãna, for he then realized that its fulfillment would take far too long. It required eons of traversing the round of saÿsãra: being born, growing old, becoming ill, and dying over and over again, enduring misery and pain indefinitely.

Renouncing the original vow relieved Ãcariya Mun of this concern, opening the way for his meditation to progress smoothly. The fact that he could so easily abandon the original vow indicates that it was not yet so firmly fixed in his conscious being that he couldn’t detach himself from it.

Ãcariya Mun often accompanied Ãcariya Sao on his excursions wandering dhutanga across the provinces of the Northeast region. Due to differences in personality, their meditation experiences varied in some respects; but each very much enjoyed the other’s company. By nature, Ãcariya Sao preferred to say very little. He was a reluctant teacher, especially of the laity. Occasionally obliged to give instruction to lay supporters, he was always very frugal with words. The little he did say could be summed up like this:

“You should renounce evil and cultivate goodness. Being fortunate enough to be born human, don’t waste this good opportunity now. Our status as human beings is a very noble one; so, avoid all animal-like behavior. Otherwise, you’ll sink below the animals, and be much more wretched as well. When you eventually fall into hell, your tortuous existence there will be far more grievous than that of any animal. So don’t do evil!”

That said, he left his seat and returned to his hut, taking no further interest in anyone.

He always spoke very sparingly. In an entire day he might say only a few sentences. On the other hand, he could endure many hours of sitting and walking in meditation. He had a remarkably dignified, noble appearance that inspired respect and devotion. Just a glimpse of his serene, peaceful countenance made a lasting impression. He was greatly revered by monks and laity alike and, like Ãcariya Mun, he had many devoted disciples.

It was well known that these two ãcariyas shared immense love and respect for each other. In the early years, they enjoyed traveling in each other’s company. They spent most of the year living together, both during and after the annual rainy season retreat. In the middle years, they normally spent these retreats in separate locations but close enough to each other to make visiting easy. Very seldom, then, did they spend a retreat together, for each had an increasingly large following of disciples, making it difficult to find enough space to accommodate them all at one location. Living separately eliminated the burden of having to arrange living quarters for so many monks.

Even when living apart, they often thought of each other with genuine concern. On occasions when Ãcariya Sao’s disciples visited Ãcariya Mun, the first question he asked concerned the health and well-being of Ãcariya Sao, who in turn invariably reciprocated by inquiring about Ãcariya Mun’s well-being when one of his disciples paid a visit. Through such messengers, each then conveyed his respectful greeting to the other, maintaining contact in this way at every opportunity. Each of these great ãcariyas had enormous respect for the other’s spiritual achievements. Both used words full of praise and admiration when speaking to their disciples about each other. Their comments never contained a hint of criticism.

ÃCARIYA MUN WHOLEHEARTEDLY agreed with Ãcariya Sao’s comment about his citta being adventurous, and tending to go to extremes: soaring high in the sky one moment, then plunging into the earth before diving to the ocean floor. His citta truly did have such mercurial characteristics. Dropping into samãdhi in the early stages of his practice, his citta tended to focus outward then, perceiving all manner of unusual phenomena – things he had never dreamed of seeing. For example, he saw a bloated corpse laid out before him. As I have mentioned before, when he concentrated his attention on this image, it soon changed into a translucent disc which in turn altered its form, creating an endless series of images.

Even after discovering the correct method of practice, when his citta ‘converged’ into calm it was still inclined to focus outward, perceiving countless types of phenomena. Sometimes, he felt his body soaring high into the sky where he traveled around for many hours, looking at celestial mansions before coming back down. At other times, he burrowed deep beneath the earth to visit various regions in hell. There he felt profound pity for its unfortunate inhabitants, all experiencing the grievous consequences of their previous actions. Watching these events unfold, he often lost all perspective of the passage of time. In those days, he was still uncertain whether these scenes were real or imaginary. He said that it was only later on, when his spiritual faculties were more mature, that he was able to investigate these matters and understand clearly the definite moral and psychological causes underlying them. Any lapse in concentration as his citta ‘converged’ into calm created an opening through which it could again focus outward to perceive such phenomena. His newfound proficiency notwithstanding, if his attention turned outward, his citta would be off in a flash.

Ãcariya Mun told us that early on, due to inexperience with the mercurial nature of his own mind, when focusing his citta to examine the lower half of his body, instead of following the various parts down to the soles of his feet, it would shoot out through his lower torso and penetrate deep into the earth – just as Ãcariya Sao had so astutely remarked. No sooner had he hurriedly withdrawn the citta back into his body than it would fly through the top of his head, soaring high into the sky where it paced back and forth contentedly, showing no interest in returning to his body. Concentrating with intense mindfulness, he had to force the citta to re-enter the body and perform the work he wanted it to do.

In those early days his mind developed a tendency to drop so speedily into a state of calm – like falling from a cliff, or down a well – that his mindfulness couldn’t keep up with it. Resting only briefly in complete stillness before withdrawing slightly to the level of upacãra samãdhi, 20 his citta tended to venture out so often, and experienced such a variety of strange things, that he became very frustrated. He tried to force it to remain inside the confines of his body, but often to no avail. His citta was far too fleeting for mindfulness and wisdom to keep pace.

Still too inexperienced to work out an effective solution, he felt uneasy about the direction of his meditation. Yet, being a strictly internal matter, he couldn’t mention his predicament to anyone else. So, with an intense degree of mindfulness and wisdom to guide his efforts, he experimented with many different techniques, suffering considerable mental strain before finding a viable means of controlling his adventuresome citta. Once he clearly understood the correct method of taming his dynamic mind, he found that it was versatile, energetic, and extremely quick in all circumstance. Eventually working in unison, mindfulness and wisdom blended so well with the citta that they merged to become one with it. Thus strengthened, the citta functioned like a magic crystal ball; and he was fully capable of keeping pace with all the myriad phenomena arising within it.

Ãcariya Mun possessed a bold, fearless character. He was also extremely intelligent. Because his rigorous training methods differed significantly from ones practiced by other monks, his style of practice was unique – and incredibly difficult to imitate. From my own observations, I can unequivocally state: He was a truly noble character with a quick, adventurous mind who trained himself with uncompromising resolve. His harsh training methods were often quite unique. He had an ingenious way of mixing coercive pressure and gentle persuasion to tame a dynamic mind that, at the least lapse of concentration, ventured out to find things that could easily cause him problems.

Struggling desperately on his own to find ways to control his unruly mind, practicing without a dependable guide and enduring difficulties, Ãcariya Mun sometimes felt that he was beating his head against a mountain. Unlike so many others, he had to manage without the aid of a wise teacher’s proven meditation methods – a disadvantage he often warned others against later on. To his own students he always emphasized his readiness to clarify any problems they experienced in meditation, thus saving them the difficulty of having to waste time as he had in his early years.

SHORTLY AFTER HIS ORDINATION, Ãcariya Mun began wandering dhutanga in Nakhon Phanom province, and eventually crossed the Mekong River to enter Laos, where he contentedly practiced the ascetic way of life in the mountainous district of Tha Khek. This area of Laos abounded in large, ferocious tigers – huge beasts that were considered far more vicious than tigers on the Thai side of the river. Repeatedly they attacked and killed the local inhabitants and then feasted on their flesh. Despite such brutality, those people, mostly of Vietnamese descent, weren’t nearly as afraid of tigers as were their Lao and Thai neighbors. Time and again they watched these terrible beasts attack and kill friends and relatives; yet, they seemed indifferent to the carnage. Having seen a friend killed right in front of them, the flesh torn from the body by a hungry tiger, the people would casually venture back into that same tiger-infested forest the next day, as though nothing had happened. The Lao and Thai communities would have been extremely upset, but the Vietnamese seemed strangely unmoved by such occurrences. Perhaps they were so accustomed to seeing such things that it no longer affected them.

The Vietnamese had another strange habit: When they saw a man-eating tiger suddenly leap out to attack one of their companions, no one in the group made any effort to save their friend’s life. They simply abandoned their friend to his fate and ran for their lives. Suppose a group were sleeping in the forest overnight. If a huge tiger leaped into the campsite and dragged one of them away, the others, awakened by the noise, would jump up and run away, and then, calmly find another place close by to sleep. Like children, they acted without much rhyme or reason in these matters. They behaved as though those huge beasts, which had already shown themselves to be so adept at devouring human flesh, were somehow too stupid to do the same to them.

I am also familiar with people who have no proper fear of tigers. When coming to live in our country, they like to settle in dense, overgrown jungle areas abounding in tigers and other wild animal. Venturing deep into the forest in search of timber, they then spend the night there far from the village, showing no signs of fear at all. Even alone, these people can sleep deep in the forest at night without fear. If they wish to return to the village late at night, they have no qualms about walking alone through the dense undergrowth, and back if necessary. If asked why they aren’t afraid of tigers, their response is that, while the huge tigers in their own country have a taste for human flesh, Thai tigers don’t; and that they’re even scared of people. Conditions can be so dangerous in their homeland that people staying overnight in the forest must build an enclosure to sleep in that resembles a pigsty; otherwise, they might never return home. Even within the precincts of some village communities, prowling tigers can be so fierce that no one dares leave home after dark, fearing an attack by a tiger leaping out of the shadows. The Vietnamese even chide the Thais for being such cowardly people, always entering the forest in groups, never daring to venture out alone. For these reasons, Ãcariya Mun claimed that the Vietnamese lacked an instinctive fear of tigers

When Ãcariya Mun crossed into their country, however, the tigers there never bothered him. Camped in the forest, he often saw their tracks and heard their roars echoing through the trees at night. However, he never felt personally threatened by such things; they were simply natural aspects of forest life. In any case, Ãcariya Mun wasn’t worried about tigers so much as he was worried about the possibility that he might not transcend dukkha and realize the Supreme Happiness of Nibbãna in his lifetime.

When speaking of his excursions crossing the Mekong River, he never mentioned being afraid. He obviously considered such dangers to be a normal part of trekking through the wilds. If I had been faced with those same dangers instead of Ãcariya Mun, surely the local villagers would have had to form a posse to rescue this cowardly dhutanga monk. When I’m walking in meditation in the forest at night, just the occasional roar of a tiger so unsettles me that I can barely manage to keep walking to the end of the track. I fear coming face to face with one of those beasts – and losing my wits. You see, since becoming old enough to understand such things, I always heard my parents and their neighbors vociferously proclaim that tigers are very fierce animals, and extremely dangerous. This notion has stuck with me ever since, making it impossible not to be terrified of tigers. I must confess that I’ve never found a way to counteract this tendency.

ÃCARIYA MUN SPENT most of the earlier years of his monastic career traveling at length through the various provinces of Thailand’s Northeast region. Later, as he developed enough inner stability to withstand both external distractions and those mercurial mental traits that were so much a part of his character, he walked down into the central provinces, wandering contentedly across the Central Plains region, living the dhutanga lifestyle until eventually he reached the capitol, Bangkok. Arriving shortly before the rainy season, he went to Wat Pathumwan monastery and entered the retreat there. During the rains retreat he made a point of regularly going to seek advice from Chao Khun Upãli Guõýpamãcariya21 at Wat Boromaniwat monastery to gain more extensive techniques for developing wisdom.

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Ãcariya Mun left Bangkok following the rains retreat, hiking to Lopburi province to stay awhile at Phai Khwang Cave in the Phra Ngam mountain range before moving on to Singto Cave. Life in such favorable locations gave him an excellent, uninterrupted opportunity to fully intensify his spiritual practice. In doing so, he developed a fearless attitude toward his mind and the things with which it came in contact. By then, his samãdhi was rock-solid. Using it as the firm basis for his practice, he examined everything from the perspective of Dhamma, continually uncovering new techniques for developing wisdom. After a suitable interval, he returned to Bangkok, once again visiting Chao Khun Upãli at Wat Boromaniwat. He informed his mentor of developments in his meditation practice, questioning him about doubts he still had concerning the practice of wisdom. Satisfied that the new investigative techniques he had learned were sufficient to further his progress, he finally took leave of Chao Khun Upãli and left to seek seclusion at Sarika Cave in the Khaw Yai mountains of Nakhon Nayok province.