Ven. Acariya Mun - Spiritual Biography + photos

asked Ãcariya Mun for an explanation. To the question: “How
could a person who has not yet died begin to take birth in a
womb?”, he answered as follows:
“She was merely preparing to take birth, the process had
not been completed yet. It’s quite common for preparations to be
made before the work takes place. In this case, she was making
the preparations but she had yet to finalize them. So it would be
incorrect to say that a person can be reborn while she is still alive.
But had she not been so perceptive, she would certainly have
established a new home in her niece’s womb.”
To the second question: “Isn’t severing the flow of the citta,
connecting the elderly lady to her niece, tantamount to destroy-
ing a human life?”, he answered as follows:
“What was there to destroy? She merely severed the flow of
her citta. She didn’t cut off the head of a living being. The true
citta remained with that woman the whole time; it simply sent a
tentacle out to latch on to her niece. As soon as she realized it and
cut the outward flow of her citta to break that connection, that
was the end of the matter.”
The important point here was, Ãcariya Mun did not con-
tradict the old woman when she described how the flow of her
citta had stolen out to reserve a place in her niece’s womb. He
did not dispute the truth of her experience, telling her that she
was mistaken or that she should reconsider the nature of her
assumptions. Instead, he responded by addressing her experience
directly.
This story is very intriguing because there was in fact a good
reason why her citta flowed out to her niece. The woman said she
had always been very fond of her niece, keeping in constant touch