mental fortitude. He imagined himself calmly walking right up to
it without the least apprehension. Reflecting on the whole expe-
rience, he felt immensely gratefully to Ãcariya Mun for so kindly
teaching him about the corrupting power of fear. Now that he un-
derstood how his mind worked, he persistently used this coercive
style of practice. Preparing to meditate, he preferred looking for
the most frightening places he could find. For the remainder of
his stay there he continued this training, making a special effort
to seek out frightening locations for conducting his meditation.
Noticing that tigers regularly used a certain path, he made a point
of sitting right in the middle of it. While meditating in the cave,
he resolved not to lower his mosquito net because sitting inside
a lowered mosquito net gave more protection from the threat of
tigers. Minus that element of fear his citta was reluctant to drop
into the desired state of calm. Where he sat depended each time
on where he felt his citta was most likely to rapidly ‘converge’ to
the very base of samãdhi.
Late one night as he sat out in the open, his citta refused to
drop into calm despite his best efforts. He sat there frustrated for a
long time until he finally thought about the huge tiger that came
and went frequently in the area: I wonder where that tiger is today.
It would be nice if it came by here to help my citta drop into calm. If
it passed by, I wouldn’t have to struggle with my meditation like this –
the citta would just instinctively drop into calm.
Not long after thinking of his friend – perhaps after half
an hour – he heard the footsteps of that huge animal walking
towards its cave, as though right on cue. The time was approach-
ing two A.M. Hearing the tiger draw nearer, he roused himself with
a timely warning: Here it comes, right now! Are you really so casual?
jacob rumans
(Jacob Rumans)
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