Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

authorities; all monks and novices were calm, quiet, and very well-
behaved. In any gathering of such size, it is unusual to meet with
even one of these favorable conditions. Having them all com-
bined in a single event was truly remarkable indeed.
Beginning at eight o’clock each night the monks assembled
to chant suttas in honor of Ãcariya Mun. The laity then offered
gifts of cloth to the monks, one of whom gave a discourse on
Dhamma. Again the next morning after the meal, members of the
laity began presenting traditional offerings of merit-making cloth
to the monks, offerings which continued with no fixed schedule
throughout most of the day. During the four-day period, there were
so many faithful devotees, traveling such great distances, hoping
to dedicate offerings of cloth, that it would have been impracti-
cal to restrict those offerings to scheduled times. The issue was
resolved by permitting lay people who wanted to dedicate offer-
ings of cloth to a monk, or a group of monks, to make their dedi-
cations as quickly and easily as possible. Those arriving with cloth
to offer were advised to contact the announcer and specifying to
him how many monks they required. Using the public address
system was by far the most convenient method, since it was almost
impossible to find a specific monk in such a large crowd in any
other way. So if certain devotees wanted to invite a specific monk
to come and receive an offering, his name was announced on the
public address system. The announcer had a complete list of the
names of all the monks in attendance. All visiting monks and
novices were required to register their names at the announcer’s
booth as soon as they arrived, and an announcement to this effect
was broadcast on a regular basis. This policy allowed the organ-
izers to make an accurate estimation of the number of monks