Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

areas infested with wild animals so that they could discover the
virtues of meditation. Such places encourage the development of
samãdhi and intuitive wisdom. Tigers can definitely help to stim-
ulate Dhamma in our hearts – especially if we don’t stand in awe
of the Lord Buddha because we fail to trust his teaching, but we
do stand in awe of tigers because we are convinced how vicious
they can be. This conviction is a very effective aid for corralling
the mind and focusing it on Dhamma, using fear as an incentive
to meditate until Dhamma arises within. Consequently, when
that inner Dhamma is finally realized, belief in the Lord Buddha
and the Dhamma he taught will arise naturally. At that critical
moment, when one is alone in the wilderness, dormant faculties
of samãdhi and wisdom will be stirred into action. If there is noth-
ing to put pressure on the citta, it tends to become lazy and amass
kilesas until it can barely function. A tiger can help to remove
those kilesas which foster such a lazy and easy-going attitude that
we forget ourselves and our own mortality. Once those insidious
defilements disappear, we feel a sense of genuine relief whatever
we do, for our hearts no longer shoulder that heavy burden.
Ãcariya Mun emphasized that monks should go to practice
meditation in places that arouse fear and avoid places that do not;
otherwise, they were unlikely to achieve any strange and mar-
velous results. More than that, the kilesas might well lead them
so far astray that they end up losing sight of the spiritual path,
which would be regrettable. He assured his monks that unless
they lived in an environment which forced them to focus inter-
nally on themselves they would find it difficult to attain a stable
state of calm and their meditation practice would suffer accord-
ingly. On the other hand, the results were bound to be good in