Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

being such cowardly people, always entering the forest in groups,
never daring to venture out alone. For these reasons, Ãcariya
Mun claimed that the Vietnamese lacked an instinctive fear of
tigers.
When Ãcariya Mun crossed into their country, however,
the tigers there never bothered him. Camped in the forest, he
often saw their tracks and heard their roars echoing through
the trees at night. However, he never felt personally threatened
by such things; they were simply natural aspects of forest life.
In any case, Ãcariya Mun wasn’t worried about tigers so much
as he was worried about the possibility that he might not tran-
scend dukkha and realize the Supreme Happiness of Nibbãna in
his lifetime.
When speaking of his excursions crossing the Mekong
River, he never mentioned being afraid. He obviously consid-
ered such dangers to be a normal part of trekking through the
wilds. If I had been faced with those same dangers instead of
Ãcariya Mun, surely the local villagers would have had to form
a posse to rescue this cowardly dhutanga monk. When I’m walk-
ing in meditation in the forest at night, just the occasional roar
of a tiger so unsettles me that I can barely manage to keep walk-
ing to the end of the track. I fear coming face to face with one
of those beasts – and losing my wits. You see, since becoming
old enough to understand such things, I always heard my par-
ents and their neighbors vociferously proclaim that tigers are very
fierce animals, and extremely dangerous. This notion has stuck
with me ever since, making it impossible not to be terrified of
tigers. I must confess that I’ve never found a way to counteract
this tendency.