Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

here. The assembly of monks sat perfectly still the entire time he
spoke, no one making the slightest sound to interrupt the cadence
of his voice as he delivered this eloquent discourse.
As he finished speaking, he made a similar remark to the
one he previously made at Wat Chedi Luang monastery in Chiang
Mai. He said, in effect, that this talk would be the ‘final encore’
of his old age – never would he give another such talk. His words
that night were prophetic, because from that day on he never
gave another profound and lengthy exposition of Dhamma. One
month later his illness began, and his health steadily declined
until he finally passed away.
Despite the physical difficulties he suffered as a result of
that degenerative disease, he insisted on making the effort to walk
to the village for almsround and continued eating only one meal
a day from his alms bowl, as he always had. He did not simply
abandon these practices. Eventually, when he felt that he could
no longer walk the entire distance, he made an effort to walk at
least halfway through the village before returning to the mon-
astery. Seeing that so much walking caused him great difficulty,
lay supporters and senior monks conferred and decided to invite
him to walk only as far as the monastery gate, where offerings
of food would be placed in his bowl. Had they requested him to
abstain altogether from going on almsround, he would surely have
demurred – so long as he was still physically able, he felt obliged
to continue. So everyone had to respect his wishes. They wanted
to avoid doing anything that might conflict with his resolute tem-
perament. He continued walking to the front gate for alms until
he became too weak to make it there and back. At that point, he
began walking only as far as the refectory to collect alms. Only