reciprocated by inquiring about Ãcariya Mun’s well-being when
one of his disciples paid a visit. Through such messengers, each
then conveyed his respectful greeting to the other, maintaining
contact in this way at every opportunity. Each of these great ãcar-
iyas had enormous respect for the other’s spiritual achievements.
Both used words full of praise and admiration when speaking to
their disciples about each other. Their comments never contained
a hint of criticism.ÃCARIYA MUN WHOLEHEARTEDLY agreed with Ãcariya Sao’s com-
ment about his citta being adventurous, and tending to go to
extremes: soaring high in the sky one moment, then plunging
into the earth before diving to the ocean floor. His citta truly
did have such mercurial characteristics. Dropping into samãdhi
in the early stages of his practice, his citta tended to focus out-
ward then, perceiving all manner of unusual phenomena – things
he had never dreamed of seeing. For example, he saw a bloated
corpse laid out before him. As I have mentioned before, when he
concentrated his attention on this image, it soon changed into a
translucent disc which in turn altered its form, creating an end-
less series of images.
Even after discovering the correct method of practice, when
his citta ‘converged’ into calm it was still inclined to focus out-
ward, perceiving countless types of phenomena. Sometimes, he
felt his body soaring high into the sky where he traveled around
for many hours, looking at celestial mansions before coming back
down. At other times, he burrowed deep beneath the earth to visit
various regions in hell. There he felt profound pity for its unfor-