Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

from the day of my ordination I have always maintained strict
control over my mind, as it is the master of body and speech.”
Question: “You mean we have to maintain our minds in
order to maintain the moral precepts?”
Ãcariya Mun: “What else would you maintain to develop
good moral virtue, if not your mind? Only the dead have no need
to look after their minds, much less their actions and speech. The
wise have never claimed that dead people have a moral bias, it
being impossible for corpses to show willful intent. If corpses did
have morality, then it would be a dead and useless one. But I am
not a corpse, so I cannot maintain a dead man’s morality. I must
do what befits one fully endowed with both good and evil tenden-
cies – I must maintain my mind in moral virtue.”
Question: “I’ve heard it said that keeping our actions and
speech in good order is called morality, which lead me to under-
stand that it’s not really necessary to look after the mind. That’s
why I asked.”
Ãcariya Mun: “It is quite true that morality entails keep-
ing our actions and speech in good order. But before we can put
our actions and speech in good moral order, we must consider the
source of moral virtue. It originates with the master of body and
speech – the mind – which makes them behave properly. Once
we have established that the mind is the determining factor, we
must ascertain how it relates to action and speech so that they
stay in good moral order that is a source of comfort to us and
others alike. It’s not only moral virtue that the mind must deal
with. The mind supervises the performance of every activity we
engage in, making sure that it’s done in a proper, orderly fashion
to produce excellent results each time.