The Adventures of âcariya Chob
Ãcariya Mun was a teacher whose unique mode of practice will
never be forgotten by those of us who were closely associated with
him. Many such senior disciples of his are still alive today. Each
ãcariya differs somewhat in his inherent virtuous qualities, his
specific mode of practice, and the special kinds of knowledge
and understanding he has attained as a result. Earlier on I men-
tioned some of these ãcariyas by name; but there are many others
whose names were not identified. Nonetheless, it was always my
intention to identify one of his senior disciples in particular, once
the story of Ãcariya Mun’s life was completed, so that the reader
could learn something of the way he practiced, the experiences he
encountered, and the insights he gained. Ãcariya Mun’s disciples
followed in his footsteps much in the same manner that the Lord
Buddha’s Arahant disciples followed in his, experiencing many
difficulties along the way before ultimately attaining the same
knowledge and understanding that their teacher had before them.
The extent to which these monks met with spine-tingling, fright-
ening situations in their practice environment depended largely
on the nature of the places where they lived and traveled.
This brings me to one senior disciple of Ãcariya Mun for
whom I have a great amount of respect. Since this ãcariya’s dhu-
tanga experiences are quite different from most of his contempo-
raries, I would like to present here some episodes from his practice
as evidence of the possibility that some of the unusual external
phenomena commonly reported at the time of the Buddha may
still exist today. Certain incidents in the life of the Buddha –
like the elephant who gave him protection and the monkey who