- you insist on wasting your time thinking about inane matters
instead of useful ones, and you probably don’t care to change. Are
you going to keep pondering this matter, asking about that ele-
phant all night without the slightest regard for Dhamma?”
With this warning, Ãcariya Mahã Thong Sak dropped the
whole affair. He was afraid that pressing the matter further would
result in an even more severe rebuke.^13
MANY MONKS WERE REBUKED for speaking carelessly to Ãcariya
Mun or speaking without good reason. Some even went mad
afterwards. One rather obtrusive monk lived with Ãcariya Mun
for a short while. When Ãcariya Mun made a comment, this
monk liked to chime in expressing his own views. When he first
arrived, Ãcariya Mun frequently warned him to mind his own
business. He advised him to keep a close watch on his thoughts
and restrain the impulse to speak out. Monks dedicated to the
practice must know how to properly conduct themselves. Those
who are mindful will see the inadequacies of a mind that wants
to flow out. But it seems that this monk was not as interested as
he should have been in Ãcariya Mun’s teaching.
Ãcariya Mun had a unique habit of taking the animals, or
the people, that he encountered on almsround as objects of con-
templation, using them to teach the monks walking behind him.
He commented out loud on what he observed, as though speaking
to no one in particular. One day, he spied a cute little calf play-
fully running around its mother. At first it didn’t see the monks
approaching; but as they came abreast, it looked around startled
and raced to its mother’s side, nuzzling in under her neck, then
