I myself, having a rather rough temperament, always preferred lis-
tening to his fiery exhortations since they fit so well with my nat-
ural disposition. For this reason, I reckon that those monks who
employed various means to provoke Ãcariya Mun into fiery talks
were in fact using their ingenuity to come up with clever provoca-
tions. Since they probably intended to benefit from his response,
they were not entirely in the wrong. The resolute Dhamma expo-
sitions that inspired me the most invariably occurred when I
asked him probing, prodding questions. His explanations then
were bound to be directed personally at me, unlike the general
explanations meant for all the monks. Once I had lived with him
for some time, I came to know many different ways of eliciting his
comments without waiting for him to bring these matters up him-
self in a general monastic meeting.ONCE ÃCARIYA MUN and three or four monks were living in a
secluded cave in Chiang Dao province. After passing three nights
there, Ãcariya Mun told the monks that, in his meditation, he
had seen a spacious, inviting cave situated high up a steep moun-
tain slope in the area nearby. He told them that many Pacceka-
buddhas^26 had resided there in the past, but that nowadays monks
couldn’t live there: the ascent was too steep and the location too
high for finding a place within walking distance where they could
obtain alms food. He told the monks to climb up the mountain to
look at the cave, and insisted they take a supply of food with them.
Since there was no path leading up to the mountain, they would
have to climb as best they could until they reached the summit.
The cave was situated a short distance from the very top.