Ãcariya Mun was a teacher whose unique mode of practice will never be forgotten by those of us who were closely associated with him. Many such senior disciples of his are still alive today. Each ãcariya differs somewhat in his inherent virtuous qualities, his specific mode of practice, and the special kinds of knowledge and understanding he has attained as a result. Earlier on I mentioned some of these ãcariyas by name; but there are many others whose names were not identified. Nonetheless, it was always my intention to identify one of his senior disciples in particular, once the story of Ãcariya Mun’s life was completed, so that the reader could learn something of the way he practiced, the experiences he encountered, and the insights he gained. Ãcariya Mun’s disciples followed in his footsteps much in the same manner that the Lord Buddha’s Arahant disciples followed in his, experiencing many difficulties along the way before ultimately attaining the same knowledge and understanding that their teacher had before them. The extent to which these monks met with spine-tingling, frightening situations in their practice environment depended largely on the nature of the places where they lived and traveled.

This brings me to one senior disciple of Ãcariya Mun for whom I have a great amount of respect. Since this ãcariya’s dhutanga experiences are quite different from most of his contemporaries, I would like to present here some episodes from his practice as evidence of the possibility that some of the unusual external phenomena commonly reported at the time of the Buddha may still exist today. Certain incidents in the life of the Buddha – like the elephant who gave him protection and the monkey who offered him honeycomb – may have their modern-day parallels in some of this acariya’s experiences. To demonstrate the authenticity of the episodes I’m about to relate, I shall identify him by name. He is Ãcariya Chob 4 who, having been ordained as a monk for many years, is now about 70 years old. He has always preferred living in remote forest and mountain areas and still does so to this day. Since he likes to trek through such wilderness areas at night, he’s constantly encountering nocturnal creatures like wild tigers.

Leaving Lomsak in Phetchabun province one afternoon, he started trekking north toward Lampang in the province of Chiang Mai. As he was about to enter a large tract of forest, he met with some local villagers who advised him, with obvious concern, to spend the night near their village and then continue on the next morning. They warned him that the forest he was about to enter was vast, so there was no way someone entering it in the afternoon could get through to the other side before dark. Those who ended up stranded in this forest after dark invariably became food for the huge tigers that roamed there at night. Since it was already afternoon, he had no chance to hike through it in time. Once darkness fell, the tigers began roaming around looking for something to eat, and they considered any person that they happened on as just another source of food. Since no one ever escaped from them alive, the villagers were fearful that Ãcariya Chob would meet the same fate. It was already well after noon, so they did not want him to enter the forest. They told him that a notice had been posted, warning travelers about this ‘forest of yakkhas’ to keep them from being eaten by those monsters. Being curious, Ãcariya Chob asked what yakkhas they were talking about. He had read old accounts about such creatures but had never actually seen one. They told him that it was just their way of referring to those huge, striped tigers who devoured anyone failing to make it through the forest by nightfall. They invited him to return with them to their village and spend the night there. He could then have a meal the next morning and continue on his journey.

Telling them that he intended to continue walking anyway, Ãcariya Chob refused to return to the village. Concerned for his safety, they insisted that, no matter how fast he walked, by having started this late in the day he could not possibly reach the other side before nightfall and would end up stranded in the middle of that vast forest. But, determined to press ahead, he refused to be deterred. They asked him if he was afraid of tigers. He acknowledged that he was but said it was irrelevant: he intended to go in any case. They insisted that the tigers there never ran away from people. If he encountered one, he was sure to lose his life. If he wanted to avoid being attacked by man-eating tigers, he should wait until morning to proceed further. He replied that should his kamma dictate that he was destined to be eaten by tigers, then that’s the way it would be. If, however, he was destined to continue living, then the tigers wouldn’t trouble him.

Taking leave of the villagers, Ãcariya Chob resumed his journey, feeling no qualms about dying. No sooner had he begun to enter the forest than he noticed that both sides of the trail he was on were covered with claw prints, where tigers had been scratching in the earth. He saw piles of tiger scat scattered all along the trail – some of it old, some of it quite fresh. As he walked along doing meditation practice, he observed these telltale signs, but he wasn’t afraid. By the time he had reached the very middle of the forest, darkness had closed in all around him.

Suddenly, he heard the roar of a huge tiger coming up behind him, followed by the roar of another huge tiger moving toward him, both calling out to each other as they quickly closed in on him. The roaring sounds from both directions grew closer and louder until suddenly both tigers emerged from the darkness at the same moment – one, merely six feet in front of him and the other a mere six feet behind. The sound of their roars had become deafening. Seeing the gravity of the situation, Ãcariya Chob stood transfixed in the middle of the trail. He saw that the tiger in front of him was crouched and ready to pounce. Glancing behind him, he saw that the tiger there, too, was crouched and ready to pounce. Fear arose in him then, for he was sure that this signaled the end of his life. Petrified with fear, he stood stock-still, rooted to the spot. But his mindfulness remained strong, so he concentrated his mind intently, and that prevented him from panicking. Even though he might be killed by those tigers, he would not allow his mind to falter. With that resolve, he turned the focus of his attention away from the tigers and back within himself, thus excluding everything external from his awareness. At that moment, his citta ‘converged’, dropping quickly into a deep state of samãdhi. As this occurred, the knowledge arose in him that the tigers could not possibly harm him. After that, everything in the world simply vanished, including himself and the tigers. Experiencing no physical sensations whatsoever, he was totally unaware of what then happened to his body. All awareness of the external world, including his physical presence, had utterly disappeared. Which meant that awareness of the tigers had also disappeared. His citta had ‘converged’ completely, dropping to the very base of samãdhi, and many hours passed before it withdrew from that state.

When his citta finally withdrew, he found that he was still standing in the same position as before. His umbrella and alms bowl were still slung over his shoulder, and in one hand he still carried a candle lantern, which had long since gone out. So he lit another candle and looked around for the tigers; but they were nowhere to be found. He had no idea where they had disappeared to.

Withdrawing from samãdhi that night, he felt no fear whatsoever. His heart was full of such remarkable courage that even if hundreds of tigers appeared at that moment, he would have remained completely unperturbed; for, he had seen with absolute clarity the extraordinary power of the citta. He felt amazed to have escaped the gaping jaws of those two tigers – a sense of amazement defying description. Standing there alone in the forest, Ãcariya Chob was suddenly overcome by a feeling of compassionate affection for the two tigers. In his mind they became friends who, having provided him with a lesson in Dhamma, then miraculously disappeared. He no longer feared them – in fact, he actually missed them.

Ãcariya Chob described both tigers as being enormous: each was about the size of a racehorse, though its body length well exceeded that of a horse. Their heads would easily have measured sixteen inches from ear to ear. He had never in his life seen tigers that were so grotesquely large. Consequently, when he first saw them he stood petrified, stiff as a corpse. Fortunately, his mindfulness remained strong throughout. Later, after his citta had withdrawn from samãdhi, he felt joyful and serene. He knew then that he could go wherever he wished without fearing anything in the world. Believing wholeheartedly that the citta, when fully integrated with Dhamma, reigns supreme in the universe, he was convinced that nothing could possibly harm him.

With this serene Dhamma filling his heart, he resumed his trek through the forest, practicing walking meditation as he hiked along. His two tiger friends were still fresh in his mind and he often thought about them. He felt that, were he to see them again, he could easily walk up and playfully stroke their backs as if they were pets, though it’s questionable whether they would ever allow it.

Ãcariya Chob walked the rest of that night in peace and solitude, buoyed by a joyful heart. When day finally broke, he still had not reached the end of the forest. It wasn’t until nine o’clock that morning that he emerged from the forest to arrive at a village settlement. Putting down his belongings, he put on his outer robes and walked through the village for alms. When the inhabitants saw him entering the village with his alms bowl, they called out to one another to come and offer him food. Having placed food in his bowl, some of them followed him back to where he had left his belongings and asked where he had come from. These being forest people who knew the ways of the forest, when they saw him emerging from that vast wilderness at an unusual hour, they wanted to questioned him about it. He told them that, having begun at the southern end, he trekked all night through the forest without sleeping and now intended to continue wandering north. Astounded by this statement, they wanted to know how it was possible, for it was common knowledge that passing through there at night meant almost certain death in the jaws of a tiger. How had he managed to avoid the tigers? Had he come across no tigers during the night? Ãcariya Chob admitted he had met some tigers, but said he hadn’t been bothered by them. The villagers were reluctant to believe him because the ferocious man-eating tigers roaming that forest were renowned for waiting to ambush anyone caught there overnight. Only after he had explained the actual circumstances of his encounter with the tigers did they finally believe him, realizing that his miraculous powers were a special case, and not applicable to ordinary people.

Whether it is the spiritual path of the heart or the physical path through the forest, ignorance of the path we are on, the distances that must be traveled, and the potential dangers along the way are all obstacles to our progress. So we must depend on a knowledgeable guide to ensure our safety. We, who are journeying along the path toward safe, happy, prosperous circumstances now and in the future, should always keep this in mind. Just because we’ve always thought and acted in a certain way, we must not carelessly assume that it is necessarily the right way. In truth, our habitual ways of thinking and acting usually tend to be mistaken, continuously leading most of us down the wrong path.

DURING HIS LIFE AS a dhutanga monk, Ãcariya Chob had many close encounters with wild animals. Once while wandering through Burma, 5  he stopped to do his practice in a cave frequented by tigers. Although these huge beasts roamed freely through the area while he lived there, they never harmed him. So he never dreamed that one would actually come looking for him. But then one afternoon at about five o’clock, as he was getting up from his meditation, his eyes glanced up to the mouth of the cave to see a huge, striped tiger approaching the entrance. It was an enormous animal and very frightening-looking; but Ãcariya Chob remained unperturbed – probably because he was so accustomed to seeing these creatures wherever he went. Peering into the cave, the tiger spied him just as he was looking up at it. Instead of showing alarm at the sight of him or roaring out in a terrifying manner, it just stood there passively, as though it were a house pet. It showed no signs of fear and made no threatening gestures. Looking casually about, the tiger leapt onto a large, flat rock at the entrance to the cave, about eighteen feet from where Ãcariya Chob stood. Sitting nonchalantly, licking its paws, it seemed uninterested in him, though it knew perfectly well he was in the cave. It sat there calmly with the air of a pet dog sitting in front of the house. Growing tired, it flopped down, stretched out its legs, and lay there comfortably just like a pet dog, continuing to lick itself as though feeling right at home.

Since Ãcariya Chob’s meditation track was right in front of the cave, he didn’t dare go out and walk there – the proximity of the huge tiger made him feel a bit nervous. His uneasiness was compounded by the fact that he had never before seen a wild tiger behave like a household pet in this way. So he continued his sitting meditation on a small bamboo platform inside the cave, though with no sense of fear that the tiger might try to harm him there. Once in a long while it casually glanced at him in the nonchalant manner of an old friend, while lying contentedly with no evident intention of moving. Ãcariya Chob expected it to eventually wander off, but it showed no interest in going anywhere.

At first, Ãcariya Chob was sitting outside his mosquito net; but once darkness fell he moved inside the net and lit a candle. The tiger remained impassive as the candlelight illuminated the cave. It continued lying contentedly on the rock until late into the night, when Ãcariya Chob finally lay down to take a rest. Awaking at about three  A . M ., he lit a candle only to find the tiger reclining impassively as before. After washing his face, he sat in meditation until the first light of dawn; then he rose from his seat and put away his mosquito net. Glancing up, he saw the tiger still stretched out comfortably, looking like some oversized pet dog in front of its master’s house. Eventually, the time for his daily almsround arrived. The only way out of the cave went straight past the tiger. He wondered what its reaction would be when he walked by. As he put on his robes he noticed the tiger looking at him with soft, gentle eyes like a dog looking wistfully at its master. Since he had no other alternative, he would have to pass within several feet of it on his way out. When he was ready, he approached the mouth of the cave and began speaking to the tiger:

“It’s now time for my morning almsround. Like all other creatures in this world, I am hungry and need to fill my stomach. If it’s okay with you, I’ll go out and get some food. Please be kind enough to let me pass by. If you want to stay on here, that’s fine with me. Or, if you prefer to go off searching for something to eat, that’s all right too.”

The tiger lay there listening to him with its head cocked like a dog listening to the voice of its master. As Ãcariya Chob walked past, it watched him with a soft, gentle gaze as if to say: Go ahead, there’s no need to be afraid. I’ve only come here to protect you from danger.

Ãcariya Chob walked down to the local village for his almsround, but he didn’t tell anyone about the tiger for fear they might try to kill it. Returning to the cave he looked at the place where the tiger had been, but there was no longer any sign of it. He had no idea where it had gone. During the remainder of his stay in that cave, it never came to visit him again.

Ãcariya  Chob suspected that the tiger  was no ordinary forest creature but rather a creation of the devas, 6  which is why it appeared so tame and unthreatening the entire time it was with him. He felt a lot of affection for it and so missed its presence for many days thereafter. He thought it might return from time to time to see him, but it never did. Although he heard the sounds of tigers roaring every night, he couldn’t tell whether his friend was among them. In any case, the whole forest was teeming with tigers. A faint-hearted person could never have lived there, but he was not affected by such dangers. In fact, the tame-looking tiger, who kept watch over him all night, made him feel more affection than fear. Ãcariya Chob said that experience increased his belief in Dhamma in quite a special way.

ÃCARIYA CHOB SPENT five years living in Burma, where he learned to speak Burmese as fluently as if it were his own language. The reason he eventually returned to Thailand concerned the Second World War. The English and the Japanese were fighting each other all up and down the countryside – in the towns, the villages, and even in the mountains. During that period, the English accused the Thai people of collaborating with the Japanese. 7 Consequently, they searched for Thais in Burma, hunting them down with a vengeance. They summarily executed any Thai they found inside Burma, regardless of whether it was a man, a woman, or a monk – no exceptions were made.

The villagers that Ãcariya Chob depended on for his daily alms loved and respected him; so when they saw the English soldiers being very meddlesome, they became concerned for his safety. They hurriedly took him deep into the mountains and hid him in a place where they decided the English would not be able to find him. But eventually a contingent of English soldiers did come across him there, just as he was giving a blessing to a group of villagers. The villagers were crestfallen. Questioned by the soldiers, Ãcariya Chob told them that he had been living in Burma for a long time and was never involved in politics. He said that being a monk, he knew nothing about such matters. The villagers spoke up in his defense to say that, unlike lay people, monks had nothing to do with the war, so it would be wrong to try to involve him in any way. They warned the soldiers that, should they take any action against him, it would amount to hurting the feelings of the Burmese people who had done nothing wrong. It would unnecessarily damage relations with the local population, which would be a grave mistake. They assured the soldiers that he had been living there since long before the war began and knew nothing about international affairs. Even though their country was now in a state of war, the Burmese people did not view this monk as a threat of any kind. Thus, if the soldiers were to harm him, it would be tantamount to harming the whole of the Burmese nation. The Burmese people could never condone such an action.

The contingent of English soldiers stood talking among themselves about what to do with Ãcariya Chob. After discussing his case for about half an hour, they told the villagers to quickly take him away to another location, for if another army patrol came and spotted him, there could be trouble. Should their pleas be rejected the next time, his life might well be in danger. While the soldiers were viewing him as an enemy, Ãcariya Chob sat quietly, extending forth thoughts of loving kindness and recollecting the virtues of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha.

When the soldiers had gone, the villagers took him deeper into the mountains, telling him not to come down to the village for almsround. Instead, each morning they secretly brought food for him to eat. From that day on, patrols of English troops regularly came to bother the villagers. Soon patrols were coming daily to ask the whereabouts of the Thai monk, and it became increasingly obvious that he would be killed if they found him. As the situation worsened, the villagers became more and more concerned for his safety. Finally, they decided to send him back to Thailand by way of a remote forest trail that passed through thick mountainous terrain. This trail was known to be safe from incursions by English patrols. They gave him detailed instructions on how to proceed, warning him to stick to the trail no matter what happened. Even if he found the trail overgrown in places, he was not to attempt a different route. It was an old footpath used for generations by the hill tribes that eventually led all the way to the Thai border.

Once he had these instructions, he began walking. He walked all day and all night without sleeping or eating, drinking only water. With great difficulty he made his way through this dense wilderness region teeming with all manner of wild animals. Everywhere he looked he saw tiger and elephant tracks. He feared he would never survive his flight from Burma; he was constantly worried that he might make one wrong turn on the trail and end up hopelessly lost in that vast wilderness.

On the morning of the fourth day of his trek to the Thai border, something incredibly amazing happened to Ãcariya Chob. Please reserve judgment on this incident until you have read the whole story. As he crested the top of a mountain ridge, he was so extremely hungry and exhausted that he thought he couldn’t possibly go on. By that time he had been walking for three days and three nights without any sleep or food. The only breaks he had taken were short periods of rest to alleviate the physical stress of such an arduous journey. While dragging his enfeebled body over the ridge, a thought arose in his mind: I have walked the entire distance to this point risking my life with every breath I take, yet somehow I’m still alive. Since starting out I’ve yet to see a single human habitation where I could request alms food to sustain my life. Am I now going to die needlessly for lack of a single meal? I’ve suffered enormous hardships on this trip – at no other time in my life have I suffered so much. Is it all going to be in vain? Have I escaped war, a sphere of death everyone fears, only to die of starvation and the hardships of this trek? If, as the Lord Buddha declared, there really are devas in the upper realms, possessing divine eyes and ears that can truly perceive at great distances, can’t they see this monk who is about ready to die at any moment? ? I do believe what the Lord Buddha said. But are the devas, who have received kind assistance from so many monks, from the Buddha’s time until the present day, really so heartless as this? If devas are not in fact hardhearted, then let them demonstrate their kindness to this dying monk so that their pure, celestial qualities can be admired.

No sooner had this thought occurred to Ãcariya Chob than something incredibly strange and amazing happened. It was almost impossible to believe. As he staggered along that remote mountain trail, he saw an elegantly dressed gentleman, who bore no resemblance to the hill tribes people of that region, quietly sitting at the side of the path, holding a tray of food offerings up to his head. It seemed impossible! Ãcariya Chob was so flabbergasted by what he saw that he got goose flesh and his hair stood on end. He forgot all about being hungry and exhausted. He was wholly astounded to see a kind-looking gentleman sitting beside the path about twenty-five feet ahead waiting to offer him food. As he approached, the gentleman spoke to him:

“Please, sir, rest here awhile and eat something to relieve your hunger and fatigue. Once you’ve regained your strength, you can continue on. You’re sure to reach the other side of this vast wilderness some time today.”

Ãcariya Chob stopped, put down what few requisites he was carrying, and prepared his alms bowl to receive the food that the gentleman was offering. He then stepped forward and accepted the food. To his amazement, as soon as the food items were placed in his bowl, a sweet fragrance seemed to permeate the whole surrounding forest. The amount of food he was offered by the gentleman was exactly the right amount to satisfy his needs. And it had an exquisite taste that was absolutely indescribable. This might seem like an extravagant exaggeration, but the truth of what his senses perceived at that moment was so amazing as to be virtually impossible to describe.

When the gentleman finished putting food in his bowl, Ãcariya Chob asked him where his house was located. He said that he had been walking for three nights and four days now but had yet to see a single human habitation. The gentleman pointed vaguely upward, saying his house was over there. Ãcariya Chob asked what had prompted him to prepare food and then wait along that trail to offer it to a monk. How had he known in the first place that there would be a monk coming to receive it? The gentleman smiled slightly, but didn’t speak. Ãcariya Chob gave him a blessing, after which the gentleman told him that he would have to leave since his house was some distance away. He appeared to be quite different from the average person in that he was remarkably dignified while speaking very little. He looked to be a middle-aged man of medium height with a radiant complexion and behavior that was impeccably self-composed. Having taken his leave, he stood up and began to walk away. As he was obviously an unusual man, Ãcariya Chob observed him carefully. He walked about twenty-five feet, stepped behind a tree, and disappeared from sight. Ãcariya Chob stared at the tree waiting for him to reappear on the other side, but he never did. This was even more puzzling; so he stood up and walked over to the tree to have a closer look – but no one was there. Had someone been in that area, he would definitely have seen him. But looking around in all directions he saw no one. The strange circumstances of the man’s disappearance surprised him all the more.

Still puzzled, Ãcariya Chob walked back and began to eat his food. Tasting the various foods he had been given, he found them to be unlike the human cuisine that he was used to eating. All the  food was wonderfully fragrant and flavorful, and perfectly suited to his bodily needs in every possible way. He had never eaten anything like it. The food’s exquisite taste permeated throughout every pore in his body which had so long been oppressed by hunger and fatigue. In the end, he wasn’t sure if it was his extreme hunger that made it taste so good or the celestial nature of the food itself. He ate every last morsel of what was offered, and it turned out to be exactly the right amount to fill his stomach. Had there been even a little extra, he would have been unable to finish it.

Having eaten, he set off again feeling incredibly robust and radiant, not at all like the person who was at death’s door a short while before. Walking along he became so absorbed in thinking about the mysterious gentleman that he forgot about the rigors of the journey, the distance he had to walk, and whether or not he was on the right trail. As evening fell, he emerged from the other side of that vast wilderness just as the mysterious gentleman had predicted. He crossed the border into Thailand with the same feeling of joy that he had been experiencing all day. The mental and physical distress that had tormented him earlier in his journey had disappeared after his morning repast. When he finally crossed into Thailand, the land of his birth, he knew for certain that he was going to live.

He said that the strange gentleman he met was surely a devic being and not one of the local inhabitants. Think about it: From the point where he met that gentleman to the point where he entered Thailand, he encountered not a single human habitation. The whole affair was very puzzling. Ordinarily, one would expect to meet with at least a small settlement of some sort along the whole of that route through Burma. As it turned out, his evasion of the army patrols had been so successful that he had encountered neither people nor food. It had been so successful that he had nearly starved to death.

Ãcariya Chob said that his almost miraculous escape from death in that vast wilderness caused him to suspect the involvement of divine intervention. Although the wilderness he passed through teemed with dangerous wild animals like tigers, elephants, bears, and snakes, he did never encounter them. The only animals he came across were harmless ones. Normally, someone trekking through such a wilderness would encounter dangerous wild animals daily, especially tigers and elephants. And there was a very strong possibility that that person might be killed by one of those savage beasts. Surely his own safe passage can be attributed to the miraculous properties of Dhamma, or miraculous intervention by the devas, or both. The villagers who helped him escape were very concerned that he would not survive the threat posed by dangerous wild animals, but there had been no other choice. Had he remained in Burma, the threat posed by the war and the English soldiers was even more imminent. So opting for the lesser of two evils, they had helped him escape from the land of blood-thirsty people, hoping that he would survive the savage beasts and enjoy a long life. Which is why he was forced to make the perilous trek that nearly cost him his life.

Please contemplate these mysterious happenings for yourself. I have recorded the stories just as I heard them. But being reluctant to pass judgment on them alone, I would prefer that you come to your own conclusions. Still, I cannot help but feel amazed that something so seemingly impossible actually occurred. Due to the rigorous nature of Ãcariya Chob’s dhutanga kammaååhãna lifestyle, he has had many other similar experiences, for he always prefers living and practicing in remote wilderness areas. Since he lives deep in the forest, few people dare to go visit him, so his involvement with society is very limited.