xixare made to feel that the Buddha’s “ancient” path to spiritual libera-
tion is as wholly relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago.
To this end, this biography of Ãcariya Mun is less concerned
with a precise account of events as they unfolded in Ãcariya Mun’s
life and career than it is with providing a source of inspiration and
edification for those devoted to Buddhist ideals. The author’s per-
spective is that of an affirmative witness and advocate rather than an
impartial observer chronicling events. Being a spiritual biography, it is
intended to give us an insight into a model spiritual life. As such, this
book should be viewed above all as an exercise in contemplation.
One aspect of Ãcariya Mun’s teaching career deserves special
mention as it surfaces time and again in the course of his biography.
Ãcariya Mun possessed a unique ability to communicate directly with
non-human beings from many different realms of existence. He was
continually in contact with beings in the higher and lower celestial
realms, spirits of the terrestrial realms, nãgas, yakkhas, ghosts of many
sorts, and even the denizens of the hell realms – all of whom are invisi-
ble to the human eye and inaudible to the human ear but clearly known
by the inner psychic faculties of divine sight and divine hearing.
The comprehensive worldview underlying Buddhist cosmology
differs significantly from the view of the gross physical universe pre-
sented to us by contemporary science. In the traditional Buddhist
worldview, the universe is inhabited not only by the gross physical
beings that comprise the human and animal worlds but also by var-
ious classes of nonphysical, divine beings, called devas, that exist in
a hierarchy of increasing subtlety and refinement, and by numerous
classes of lower beings living in the sub-human realms of existence.
Only the human and animal worlds are discernible to normal human
sense faculties. The others dwell in a spiritual dimension that exists
outside the range of human concepts of space and time, and there-
fore, beyond the sphere of the material universe as we perceive it.
It was Ãcariya Mun’s remarkable, inherent capacity for commu-