Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

monks and novices were camped out inside of Wat Suddhawat
alone; several hundred more found shelter in nearby monaster-
ies. In all, well over a thousand monks and novices were present
at Ãcariya Mun’s cremation. As for the lay devotees, it was simply
impossible to count how many were camped inside the monas-
tery grounds. Over and above that, many more people stayed out-
side the monastery, sleeping under trees or out in the open fields.
Many more slept in town, filling up all the limited hotel space.
With the entire multitude finally assembled at the funeral pyre on
cremation day, it was impossible to give an accurate reckoning of
their total strength. At best, one could estimate that tens of thou-
sands were in attendance that day.
And yet, strangely, amazingly, there was very little of the
kind of noise usually associated with such a crowded ceremony.
Only the sound of the public address system was heard, broadcast-
ing the religious functions being performed in connection with the
cremation. Performed strictly in accordance with kammaååhãna
tradition, there were no sideshows to entertain the crowd. The
quantities of food, cloth, and other items, that were offered by
devotees from all over the region to help the monastery with the
funeral, amounted to a small mountain of goods. Hundreds of
sacks of rice were offered, while the cars of faithful donors con-
tinuously brought food of all sorts to help feed everyone. The
quantity of merit-making cloth, offered in honor of Ãcariya Mun,
would probably have filled a weaving factory. I’ve never seen a
weaving factory and I have no idea how big they are, but I am
confident that this mountain of cloth brought by faithful follow-
ers from all over the country would have exceeded the capacity
of any such factory.