ing difficulties, Ãcariya Mun sometimes felt that he was beat-
ing his head against a mountain. Unlike so many others, he had
to manage without the aid of a wise teacher’s proven meditation
methods – a disadvantage he often warned others against later on.
To his own students he always emphasized his readiness to clarify
any problems they experienced in meditation, thus saving them
the difficulty of having to waste time as he had in his early years.
SHORTLY AFTER HIS ORDINATION, Ãcariya Mun began wandering
dhutanga in Nakhon Phanom province, and eventually crossed
the Mekong River to enter Laos, where he contentedly practiced
the ascetic way of life in the mountainous district of Tha Khek.
This area of Laos abounded in large, ferocious tigers – huge beasts
that were considered far more vicious than tigers on the Thai side
of the river. Repeatedly they attacked and killed the local inhabit-
ants and then feasted on their flesh. Despite such brutality, those
people, mostly of Vietnamese descent, weren’t nearly as afraid
of tigers as were their Lao and Thai neighbors. Time and again
they watched these terrible beasts attack and kill friends and rel-
atives; yet, they seemed indifferent to the carnage. Having seen a
friend killed right in front of them, the flesh torn from the body
by a hungry tiger, the people would casually venture back into
that same tiger-infested forest the next day, as though nothing
had happened. The Lao and Thai communities would have been
extremely upset, but the Vietnamese seemed strangely unmoved
by such occurrences. Perhaps they were so accustomed to seeing
such things that it no longer affected them.
The Vietnamese had another strange habit: When they saw