wanting to discover the truth about pain. Don’t do it again. It’s
the wrong way to go about realizing the many truths to be found
within the body, the pain, and the citta. During the middle of the
day I examined your practice to see how you were coping with
the pain caused by your fever. I noticed you were just focusing
your attention exclusively on the pain. You were not using mind-
fulness and wisdom to ease the problem by looking at all three
aspects of it: body, pain, and citta. This is the only effective way
to quell pain, and neutralize the symptoms, so that the fever sub-
sides as well.”Tigers Make the Best Teachers
When Ãcariya Mun believed that a specific kind of advice would
help one of his students, he spoke to him directly about it. He
could be very blunt in his advice to certain monks.
“You’d be better off going to meditate in that cave than you
are living here in the monastery. Characters like yours prefer tough,
coercive measures. Better still, find a tiger to be your teacher – fear
of it will subdue your citta, forcing it to enter into calm. Realiz-
ing Dhamma in this way, you can gain some contentment. Living
here in the monastery is not right for you. Stubborn people need
hard things to soften them up and make them more pliable. Since
tigers are such good tormentors, anyone fearing them should take
one as a teacher. It’s much better than having a teacher you don’t
fear. If you are afraid of ghosts, you should take ghosts as teach-
ers to enforce mental discipline. Take as a teacher whatever your