Ajahn Mun's nirvana: Forest Tradition

Devas like this devi interact with sensitive humans?

Ãcariya Mun: The Buddhist master who took the gods to school

Maybe Kali's just time, destruction

(American Esoteric) Feb. 19, 2025: [The Theravada Thai Forest Tradition of Isan (Northeast Thailand) has produced numerous enlightened practitioners. How is that possible? All the Zen folks, at least the fans of Joko Beck, say such a thing isn't possible nowadays, now, in the Kali Yuga, the dark decadent age of Hindu cosmology. (Kali is a goddess who kicks arse and is here to kick a lot of arse). It would be silly to think of achieving anything in Zen, which would be so un-Taoist. Of course, the historical Buddha didn't say such things. In fact, it is considered wrong view to believe no one attains nirvana anymore, no one is enlightened, there is no other world, or there's nothing to be done here in this world during this life.

What's a deva or "shining one"?

There is much to be done for the sake of calm and insight, much to practice. But if we let ourselves believe, "Ah, what's the use?" or "There's no one who gets anywhere anyway," we miss the mark and miss the boat. Did Ajahn Mun take such an attitude? It is exactly because there were meditators a few decades back who took the historical Buddha's Teaching seriously and put those teachings into practice that there came to be a Thai Forest Tradition harkening back to the Buddha's time and how things were done back then. Because those teachers attained something, there students were able to. This included Western students like Brit Ajahn Brahm and Americans Ajahn Sumedho, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and others.]

TIMESTAMPS

• 

  What do the devas have to do with anything?

  00:00-3:31 The dhutanga (sane ascetic) practices
• 3:32-7:09 Early psychic phenomena
• 7:10-8:43 Embracing fear
• 8:44-11:45 The deva of Sarika Cave
• 11:46-16:07 Remote viewing
• 16:08-20:36 Discipline and progress
• 20:37-22:27 Realms and devas
• 22:28-26:29 Miracles and powers
• 26:30-29:19 Life-death-rebirth
• 29:20-31:00 The hypercritical naga
• 31:01-34:28 The spiritual warrior

SOURCE

• Venerable Ãcariya Mun Bhuridatta Thera, A Spiritual Biography by Ãcariya Maha Boowa Nanasampanno (2004)

Patreon: americanesoteric, Venmo: venmo.com/u/Collin-Conkwright, Instagram: american.esoteric

• Collin Conkwright, American Esoteric, Feb. 19, 2025; Sayalay Aloka and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Life isn't just suffering (Ven. Thanissaro)

American Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chodron

Tan Geoff tells this story about the first noble truth: "He showed me the brightness of the world."

That's how my teacher, Ajahn Fuang, once characterized his gratitude to his teacher, Ajahn Lee [Dhammadaro, student of Ajahn Mun]. His words took me by surprise.

I had only recently come to study with him, still fresh from a school where I had learned that serious Buddhists took a negative, pessimistic view of the world.

Yet, here was a monk who had given his life over to the practice of the Buddha's Teachings speaking of the world's brightness.

Of course, by "brightness" he wasn't referring to the joys of the food, arts, travel, sports, family life, or any of the other sections of the Sunday paper.

The happiest couple in the world...and the most miserable. I want a divorce! - Oh yeah? 💩

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He was talking about a better and deeper happiness that comes from within us. As I came to know him, I gained a sense of how deeply happy he was.

He may have been skeptical about human pretenses, but I'd never describe him as pessimistic or negative. "Realistic" would be closer to the truth.

Yet, for a long time I couldn't shake the sense of paradox I felt. How could the pessimism of translated Buddhist texts find embodiment in such a solidly happy person?

Only when I began to look directly at the early sutras did I realize that what I thought was paradox was actually irony.

Ironically, Buddhism, which gives such a positive view of a human being's potential for finding true happiness, could be branded in the West as "negative and pessimistic."

Ouch.  Ouch. Ouch.

There's a rumor that, "'Life is suffering' is Buddhism's first principle," the first noble truth, according to the Buddha. It's a rumor with good credentials. It is spread by well-intentioned and well-respected academics and Dharma teachers alike. But it is a rumor, nonetheless.

The truth about the Four Noble Truths is far more interesting.

The Buddha taught four ennobling (enlightening) truths — not one — about life:

1. There is suffering (disappointment, pain, stress)
2. There is a cause of suffering
3. There is an end of suffering
4. There is a path of practice that puts an end to suffering.

These truths, taken as a whole, are very optimistic. They're practical. It's a problem-solving approach — the way a doctor approaches an illness (pain), a mechanic a faltering engine. Identify the problem and look for its cause. Then put an end to the problem by eliminating its cause.

What's special about the Buddha's approach is that the problem he approaches is the whole of human (and deva) suffering. The solution he offers is something humans (and devas) can do for themselves.

Just as a physician with a surefire cure for measles is no longer afraid of measles, the Buddha isn't afraid of any aspect of suffering. Having experienced pleasure and happiness free of all conditions, he's intrepid.

He's not afraid to point out suffering and disappointment inherent in places where most of us would rather not see them — the conditioned pleasures we cling to.

He teaches beings not to deny suffering and disappointment, not to run away, but to stand still and face them, to examine them carefully. That way — by understanding them — we can discern a cause and put an end to it, a total end. How confident can one get? More

• Ajahn Geoff (aka Geoffrey DeGraff, Thanissaro Bhikkhu), "Life Isn't Just Suffering," accesstoinsight.org; edited by Amber Larson, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

Mind (heart) precedes all things

Theravada Thai Forest Master Ajahn Mun, A Heart Released (PDF), Ven. Thanisaro (trans.), 2016, from Thai Forest Tradition (wiki entry), Dhr. Seven, Pat Macpherson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Theravada novices meditating under crots, umbrella mosquito net tents (dharmathai.com)

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Kammatthana Yantra, Thai Forest

"All that we are is the result of mind, it is founded on mind, it is mind-made: If one speaks or acts with an unskillful mind, pain follows like the wheel that follows the ox that draws a [heavily laden] cart."

"Mind precedes all mental states. Mind is their chief. They are all mind-made. If with a skillful mind a person speaks or acts, happiness follows like one's never-departing [and easily hauled] shadow" (Dhammapada 1-2).

Ajahn Mun explains

Life-like statue of Ajahn Mun

Mind comes first. This was explained by Ajahn Mun to his pupils in a talk. It was given in a style of wordplay derived from an Isan (Northeast Thailand) form of song known as maw lam:

"The two elements, namo [water and earth = the body] when mentioned by themselves are inadequate or incomplete. We have to rearrange the vowels and consonants as follows:

"Take the a from the n and give it to the m; take the o from the m and give it to the n, and put the ma in front of the no. This gives us mano, the heart [mind].

"Now we have the body together with the heart [mind], and this is enough to be used as the root foundation for the practice. Mano, the heart[/mind], is primal, the great foundation. Everything we do or say comes from the heart [mind], as stated in the Buddha's words [from the Dhammapada]:

mano-pubbangama dhamma

mano-settha mano-maya

"All dhammas [things] are preceded by the heart [mind], dominated by the heart, made from the heart." The Buddha formulated the entire Dhamma and Vinaya (Doctrine and Discipline) from out of this great foundation, the heart.

So when Ajahn Mun's disciples contemplate in accordance with the Doctrine and Discipline until namo is perfectly clear, then mano lies at the end point of formulation. In other words, it lies beyond all formulations.

All supposings come from the heart. All of us have our own load, which we carry as "supposings and formulations" in line with the currents of the flood (of corruptions, biases, ogha).

This happens to the point that they give rise to unknowing (avijja), the factor that creates states of becoming and rebirth, all from our not being wise to these things, from our delusion of holding [onto them and holding] them all to be "me" or "mine."

• Ajahn Mun, A Heart Released, 2016 (dhammatalks.org)

Ajahn Mun: How to improve and decline

B&B (MTV); Ajahn Mun via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

O, Wise One! What should be done and what left undone to rise above the world?

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Let's join the Army, Beavis. - Huh, huh huh.

The traits that people have carried over from the past [countless past lives] differ in being skillful, unskillful, or neutral.

Their potential follows along with their traits -- that is, higher than what they currently are, lower, or at the same level.

Some people have developed a high potential to be skillful (karmically profitable, wholesome, beneficial), but if they associate with fools, their potential will turn into that of a fool.

Some people are weak in terms of their potential, but if they associate with sages (noble friends), their potential develops and they become sages, too.

Some people associate with friends who are neither particularly skillful nor unskillful, who lead them neither up nor down, and so their potential stays at a mediocre level.

For this reason, we are wise to associate with sages and wise people so as to raise the level of our own potential, progressively taking it higher and higher, step by step.

Meditation practice is worth more than study

Ajahn Mun via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly

People who have studied a lot of the Doctrine and Discipline (Dharma and Vinaya called Buddhism) -- who have learned many approaches together with their many ramifications -- when they come to train their minds, find that their minds don’t settle down easily into concentration.

They need to realize that they must first take their learning and put it back on the shelf for the time being.

They need to train “what knows” -- this very mind -- developing their mindfulness until it is super-mindfulness, their discernment until it is super-discernment, so that they can see through the super-deceits of conventional truth and common assumptions that set things up, naming them, “This is this” and “That is that” -- days, nights, months, years, earth, sky, sun, moon, constellations, everything -- all the things that thought-formations, the conditions or effects of the mind, set up as being this or that.

Ajahn Chah: Who's meditating but karma?

Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Mun via Ven. Sujato; Ellie Askew, Crystal Q. (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Who am I when I meditate? Am I that one or that one or that one? (Ariana Grande)

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I have the power to change my karma? Yes!

When our mind is in line with the Dharma [the ultimate truth], there is no one who is diligent and there is no one who is lazy.

It’s a matter of how the mind is conditioned. The practice of insight (vipassana meditation) keeps flowing automatically without laziness or diligence. It’s a state that is self-sustaining, fueled by its own energy.

Once the mind has these characteristics, it means one no longer has to be "the doer" in the practice. We could say that it’s as if we have finished all the work we have been doing and the only thing left is for us to leave things to themselves and watch over the mind.

We don’t have to be someone who is doing something anymore. There is still mental activity occurring:

We experience pleasant and unpleasant sense contact according to our karmic accumulations -- but we see it as "just that much" [like a handful of grass trimmings] and are letting go of attachment to the sense of self (ego) the whole time.

"Karmic accumulations"?

They should be like us -- right, chief, my homey? - Not necessarily, cuzz.

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(Ajahn Mun) The traits that people have carried over from the past -- their store of karma -- differ in being skillful, unskillful, or neutral.

Their potential as people follows along with their traits, that is to say, higher than what they currently are, lower, or on a par.

Some people have developed a high potential to be skillful (wholesome), but if they associate with fools, their potential will develop into that of a fool.

Some people are weak in terms of their potential, but if they associate with sages, their potential improves and they become sages, too.

Some people associate with friends who are neither skillful nor unskillful, who lead them neither up nor down, so their potential stays at a mediocre level.

For this reason, we should associate with sages and wise people so as to raise the level of our potential progressively higher and higher, step by step.

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The Dharma and Virtue

Ajahn Mun and Ajahn Chah via Ven. Sujato; Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

As a meditator, use the strategy of listening to the Dharma all the time, even when living alone. In other words, contemplate the Dharma day and night.

The eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body are physical phenomena (rūpa-dhamma) that are always present. Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations are also present for us to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch. The mind? It, too, is present.

Our thoughts and feelings about various topics -- good and bad -- are present as well. Development and decay, both within us and without, are also present.

These things naturally display the Truth -- the impermanent, ultimately disappointing, and impersonal nature of all things -- for us to see at all times.

When a leaf turns yellow and falls from the tree, for instance, it’s showing us the truth of impermanence.

So when we continually use this approach to contemplate things with mindfulness (bare awareness that is free of judgment, clinging, or rejection) and wisdom (keen discernment), we are said to be listening to the Dharma at all times, day and night.

Begin with virtue

Ajahn Chah edited by Wisdom Quarterly

At first we train the body and speech to be free of unwholesomeness. Such freedom is virtue (sila). Some people think that to have virtue we must memorize Pali [the world’s only exclusively-Buddhist language] phrases and chant all day and all night. But really all we have to do is make our body and speech blameless. That’s virtue. It’s easy to understand. It’s just like cooking food: We put in a little bit of this and a little bit of that till it’s just right. Then it’s delicious. And once it’s delicious, we don’t have to add anything else to it. The right ingredients have already been added. In the same way, taking care that our actions and speech are proper will give us delicious virtue, virtue that is just right.

If Buddhism taught Biology

§ 3. The root inheritance, the starting capital for self-training

I didn't ask to be reborn. It was my karma.

...This suggests that namo must be significant.

"If we take it up for consideration, we find that na stands for the water element, and mo for the earth element—and with this, a line from the Buddhist texts comes to mind:

Mātā-petika-sambhavo odāna-kummāsa-paccayo:

Biology

The caul or embryonic sac we're born in

"When the generative elements of the mother and father are combined, the body comes into being. When it is born from the mother’s womb, it is nourished with rice and meal and so is able to develop and grow."

Na is the mother’s element; mo, the father’s element. When these two elements are combined, the mother’s fire element then warms the combination until it becomes what is called a kalala, a droplet of oil.

This is the point where the connecting consciousness (paṭisandhi-viññāṇa) can make its connection so that the mind becomes joined to the namo element. Once the mind has taken up residence, the droplet of oil develops until it is an ambuja, a glob of blood.

"From a glob of blood it becomes a ghana, a rod, and then a pesī, a lump of flesh. Then it expands itself into a lizard-like shape, with five extensions: two arms, two legs, and a head.

"(As for the elements ba, breath, and dha, fire, these take up residence later, because they are not what the mind holds onto. If the mind lets the droplet of oil drop, the droplet of oil vanishes or is discarded as useless.

"It has no breath or fire, just as when a person dies and the breath and fire vanishes from the body. This is why we say they are secondary elements. The important factors are the two original elements, namo).
 

I am completely dependent on others.

"After the child is born, it has to depend on na, its mother, and mo, its father, to care for it, nurturing it and nourishing it with such foods as rice and meal, at the same time teaching and training it in every form of goodness.

"The mother and father are thus called the child’s first and foremost teachers. The love and benevolence the mother and father feel for their children cannot be measured or calculated. The legacy they give us—this body—is our primal inheritance.

"External wealth, silver or gold, comes from this body. If we didn’t have this body, we wouldn’t be able to do anything, which means that we wouldn’t have anything at all.

"For this reason, our body is the root of our entire inheritance from our mother and father, which is why we say that the good they have done us cannot be measured or calculated [and is impossible to repay except by establishing them in the liberating Dharma]. Wise people thus never neglect or forget them.

"We first have to take up this body, this namo, and only then do we perform the act of bending it down in homage. To translate namo as homage is to translate only the act, not the source of the act." More

Book
A Heart Released: The Teachings of Phra Ajaan Mun, translated by Ven. Ṭhānissaro. (ePublished Jan. 1, 2016). Much has been written about the life of Ajahn Mun (1870-1949), the founder of the Thai Forest Tradition, but very little was recorded of his teachings during his lifetime. (Most of his teachings he left in the form of people: the students whose lives were profoundly shaped by the experience of living and practicing meditation under his guidance). Translated here, A Heart Released (Muttodaya), is a record of passages from his sermons made during the years 1944-1945 by two monks who were staying under his guidance.

The Heart Wisdom of Buddhism

Ajahn Chah, Ajahn Mun via Ven. Sujato; Aloka, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Mano-pubbaṅgamā dhammā mano-seṭṭhā mano-mayā:

"All dhammas [phenomena, things] are preceded by the

heart, dominated by the heart, made from the heart."
 

See with your heart.

The Buddha formulated this entire Dharma (Doctrine) and Discipline from this great foundation, the heart.

So when disciples contemplate in accordance with the Dharma and Discipline until namo ["honor, homage"] is perfectly clear then mano ["mind"] lies at the end point of formulation. In other words, it lies beyond all formulations.

• Ven. Thanissaro explains namo and mano (Heart Released, § 3) Why is it that wise people—before chanting, receiving the precepts, or performing any other act of merit—­always take up namo as their starting point? ...na stands for the water element, and mo for the earth element...

Londoner Ven. Sujato, monk in Thailand

All supposings come from the heart. Each of us has her/his own load to carry as supposings and formulations in line with the currents of "the flood" (ogha).

[This happens] to the point where they give rise to ignorance (avijjā), the factor that creates states of becoming and rebirth [and therefore creates all states of suffering].

All [of this happens] from our not being wise to these things, from our deludedly holding [clinging to] them all to be "me" or "mine."

- Ajahn Mun

Letting go

Enlightened Thai monk Ajahn Chah

If we see things with real insight then there is no stickiness [clinging] in our relationship to them.

They come -- pleasant and unpleasant -- we see them, and there is no attachment. They come, and they pass.

Even if the worst kinds of defilements come up, such as greed or anger, there’s enough wisdom to see their impermanent nature and allow them to just fade away.

If we react to them, however, by liking or disliking, that isn’t wisdom. We’re only creating more suffering for ourselves.

- Ajahn Chah

The Heart Sutra?

The Heart Sutra in Japanese

Ajahn Chah listened to one of his disciples recite the Heart Sutra. When he finished, Ajahn Chah said, "No emptiness either...no bodhisatta [no being striving for enlightenment]."

He then asked, "Where did the sutra come from?"

"It’s reputed to have been spoken by the Buddha," the follower replied.

"No Buddha," Ajahn Chah retorted. Then he added, "This is talking about deep wisdom, beyond all conventions. How could we teach without them? We have to have names for things, isn’t that so?

- Ajahn Chah

Fever

Fever in the world (allbetterpediatrics.com)

The world is in a very feverish state. The mind [heart] changes from like to dislike with the feverishness of the world. If we can learn to make the mind still, it will be the greatest help to the world.

- Ajahn Chah

I went all over looking for places to meditate. I didn’t realize it was already there, in my heart. All the meditation is right there inside us. Birth, old age, sickness, and death are right there within us.

I traveled all over until I was ready to drop dead from exhaustion. Only then, when I stopped, did I find what I was looking for...inside me.

-Ajahn Chah

Contemplating the Body

Ajahn Mun (original flawed translation by Ven. Thanissaro) via Ven. Sujato (facebook.com); edited by Dhr. Seven, Dhamma Teacher Aloka, Crystal Q., Wisdom Quarterly

"Alas, before long this body, deprived of consciousness, will lie strewn on the earth, discarded, just like a useless log" - Dhammapada, Verse 41 (tipitaka.net).

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Not me, baby! I'ma last forever!

The contemplation of the body is a practice sages -- including the Buddha -- have described in many ways.

For example, in the "Great [Fourfold] Establishing of Mindfulness" Sutra, the Buddha calls the contemplation of the body a support (or "frame of reference") for establishing mindfulness using this very body.

Among the root subjects of meditation taught to new monastics at the beginning of the ordination ceremony, a preceptor instructs them to mindfully contemplate:

1. head hairs
2. body hairs
3. nails
4. teeth
5. skin.

When organism overtake the immune system

In the Buddha's first ever sutra, the "Discourse on the Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma," he teaches that birth, aging, and death are disappointing (unwished for, unsatisfactory, painful, hard to accept, hard to endure, displeasing, leading to no fulfillment).

We have all now taken birth, have we not? So when we practice to take these liberating-teachings inwardly, contemplate them, and apply them to ourselves (opanayiko), we are doing well in our practice of the Dharma.

Why? Because the Dharma ("Truth") is akāliko (timeless, immediate, ever present) and āloko (self-evidently clear by day and night, free of anything that would obscure it).

What's the hell? Who stinks?

War criminal Hillary Clinton stinks of foul sulfur.

While residing at Jetavana monastery, the Buddha uttered Verse 41 of the Dhammapada with reference to Venerable Tissa.

After taking a meditation subject from the Buddha, Ven. Tissa was diligently practicing meditation when he became afflicted with a disease.

Small boils appeared all over his body then developed into big sores. When the sores burst, his robes became sticky, stained with pus and blood. And his body began to stink.

For this reason, he was known as Putigatta Tissa, "Tissa with the stinking body."

Bathed by the Buddha

Another realizes the Truth and is set free.

As the Buddha surveyed his surroundings with the light of wisdom, the monk appeared in his field of vision.

He saw his sorrowful state, abandoned by other monks (his resident pupils) on account of his bad smell.

The Buddha knew Tissa had the capacity to attain full enlightenment. So he proceeded to a shed close to where Tissa was staying.

He boiled fresh water and took it where Tissa was lying down. He took hold of the edge of his cot.

Only then did the resident monks, Tissa's pupils, gather around. And as instructed by the Buddha, they carried Tissa to the shed, where he was bathed and rinsed.

His robes were washed and dried for him. Afterward, Tissa felt fresh in body and mind. Soon he developed one-pointedness of mind in profound concentration.

Standing at the head of the cot, the Buddha said to Tissa that this body, when devoid of life, would be as useless as a log strewn on the earth.