animals – and much, much more. Fundamentally, it’s no differ-
ent from seeing with the physical eyes and hearing with the phys-
ical ears.Tigers in Disguise
Ãcariya Mun said that, excepting the few who had visited large
towns in the region, most of the hill tribe people in Chiang Mai
had never seen monks before. Early in his travels, Ãcariya Mun
and another monk went to live in the mountains about a mile
and a half from a hill tribe village. They camped in the forest,
taking shelter under the trees. In the morning, when they went to
the village for alms food, the villagers asked why they had come.
Ãcariya Mun said they had come to collect alms. Puzzled, the vil-
lagers asked him what that meant. Ãcariya Mun explained that
they had come to collect offerings of rice. They asked him if he
wanted cooked rice or uncooked rice. When he said cooked rice,
they got some and put a little in each of their alms bowls. The two
monks then returned to their camp and ate the plain rice.
Lacking faith from the very beginning, the villagers were
very suspicious of the monks. That evening the village headman
sounded the bamboo clapper to call everyone to a meeting. Refer-
ring to Ãcariya Mun and his disciple, he announced that there
were now two ‘tigers in disguise’ staying in the nearby forest. He
said that he had yet to determine what kind of tigers they were,
but they weren’t to be trusted. He forbade the women and chil-
dren to enter the forest in that area; and men who went were