Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

Aren’ t you afraid it will sink its teeth into your neck and make a meal
of you? If you don’t want to be tiger food, then you better hurry up and
look for a safe place to hide.
As he thought this, he conjured in his mind an image of
the tiger pouncing on him, its gaping jaws closing in around his
neck. The moment he fixed his attention on this mental image,
his citta ‘converged’, dropping rapidly until it reached the very
base of appanã samãdhi. Instantly all external phenomena com-
pletely vanished from his awareness – himself, the tiger, every-
thing. What remained was serenity and tranquility – the union
of citta and Dhamma as they melded into one essence of inde-
scribable wonder. His citta rested in that sublime state for a total
of eight hours – from two o’clock that night until ten o’clock the
next morning. Upon withdrawing, he saw the sun was already
high, so he again canceled his almsround and went without food.
He then walked over to inspect the place, where he heard the
tiger approaching, to see if there were any signs that a tiger really
had passed by. Or had his ears merely been playing tricks on
him? Looking at the ground, he saw the tracks of a huge tiger,
about twelve feet behind the spot where he had been sitting. The
tiger’s tracks continued in a straight line all the way up to its
cave, never veering off to the direction where its friend was sit-
ting in meditation. The whole incident was strange, and quite
amazing.
The experience, in appanã samãdhi, of the citta fully ‘con-
verging’ into its true base, is an experience that varies according
to the natural inclination of each individual. Some people are
inclined by temperament to experience a very rapid convergence,
feeling as though they are falling down a well. The internal sense