monk had accepted the truth, he finished speaking and adjourned
the meeting.
As it disbanded, there was a stir of excitement. The monks
asked one another who had dared entertain thoughts so perverse
to have elicited such a fierce response from Ãcariya Mun that his
voice raged furiously, like thunder and lightning. There must have
been some provocation. Otherwise, he would never have given a
blazing admonition like that. Those thoughts must have affected
him so acutely that he couldn’t resist unleashing the full force of
his reason. Eventually, the monk in question owned up to the
thoughts that I have mentioned before.
Normally dhutanga monks did not conceal their thoughts
and opinions from one another. If their thoughts became the
subject of Ãcariya Mun’s rebuke, they invariably admitted their
lapses in judgment when they were questioned later. Although the
monks usually found it amusing when a fellow-monk was roasted
by Ãcariya Mun, they also became conscious of their own short-
comings. Such shortcomings could be easily exposed on alms-
round, or on some other errand outside the monastery, where a
monk encountered an emotionally stimulating object that stuck
in his mind and became a preoccupation. Such indiscretion was
likely to elicit the kind of fierce response that frightened everyone
within earshot and prompted nervous glances all around. Terri-
fied of Ãcariya Mun, ashamed in front of his friends, the culprit
was usually shaking as he sat, rooted to his seat, with his head
bowed and not daring to look up. When the meeting was over, the
monks would ask around and find out that, as always, there was
indeed one in their group whose thoughts caused Ãcariya Mun’s
rebuke. It was rather a pity, for those monks had no intention
jacob rumans
(Jacob Rumans)
#1