Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

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tiltbillings
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by tiltbillings »

kirk5a wrote:
Dhammanando wrote:Like the cardinal with his ‘special revelations’, Ajahn Maha Bua could justify virtually anything simply by claiming that it had been directly revealed to Ajahn Mun by the Buddha himself.
What, exactly, did Ajahn Maha Bua actually justify in this way?
The interesting thing about Maha Bua's biography of Ajahn Mun is that other students of Ajahn Mun strongly disagreed with the portrayal of Ajan Mun by Maha Bua. Sadly, it is Maha Bua's biography with which we are stuck. What is interesting about the biography is that in it we can see how the Mahayana, in it religious splendor, arose.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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robertk
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by robertk »

do you have the citations where the other followers of Mun disagreed with Mahabua. i would appreciate having those.
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tiltbillings
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by tiltbillings »

robertk wrote:do you have the citations where the other followers of Mun disagreed with Mahabua. i would appreciate having those.
I do not, though they might be mentioned in other threads on this forum. it was a topic of discussion on the now very dead Grey Forum, and a particular student of Ajahn Mun was quoted as disagreeing with Maha Boowa's biography/hagiography.
>> Do you see a man wise [enlightened/ariya] in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.<< -- Proverbs 26:12

This being is bound to samsara, kamma is his means for going beyond. -- SN I, 38.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” HPatDH p.723
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Jon. S
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by Jon. S »

In Maha Boowa's biography, Samana, he also talks in-detail about his enlightenment.. I've always been kind of confused about that point. Aren't bhikkhus prohibited from speaking of attainments?
I was born naked.
My beloved parents
kindly gave me a name.
When I reached twenty
I thought "a name is a chain,
I want to abandon it".
Whoever I questioned
No one answers me.
When I hear the wind in the pines
I get an answer.
rohana
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by rohana »

robertk wrote:I do not understand why so many Buddhists prefer to idolize the concept of Absolute Nothingness or Total Loss like that of the materialists and attribute it to teh cessation of suffering or Nibbana. What benefit is there in clinging to the nihilist idea of nothingness, hoplessness or bleakness like that? To be well versed in the Tipitaka is never enough. That is only pariyatti, which could become a hindrance and even a snake killing whoever makes a religion or God of it. This attitude towards book- learning, unsupported by firsthand experience through practice, is called agaladdupara pariyatti. It can be another Net of Wrong View. The pariyatti or book learning may earn the students such grandiose terms as Maha, pandita etc, yet it is memory work, speculation, imgination, anything but firsthand experience or attainment. Such being the case who is in a position to misinterpret the Buddha's word. Those admirers[of book study] will have to face the dilemma and admit the incompleteness of such book-study and the delusion of high-sounding titles such as Maha, pandita ect."

<....>Nibbana, unlike the materialists death, does not end all. If acceptance of this fact should bring the Theravdins a bit closer to the Mahayanists then it is to be willingly accepted. After all it is better than a concept that brings us closer to the materialists isnt it."
Well, the Buddha was accused of being an annihilationist too, so there's that. :coffee:
"Delighting in existence, O monks, are gods and men; they are attached to existence, they revel in existence. When the Dhamma for the cessation of existence is being preached to them, their minds do not leap towards it, do not get pleased with it, do not get settled in it, do not find confidence in it. That is how, monks, some lag behind."
- It. p 43
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manas
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by manas »

Dhammanando wrote:
greenjuice wrote:How did the Lord Buddha talk to Acharn Mun?
Perhaps while the latter was undergoing an hallucination or pleasant snooze.

  • “Bhikkhus, just as when the stalk of a bunch of mangoes has been cut, all the mangoes on it go with it, just so the Tathāgata’s link with becoming has been cut. As long as the body subsists, devas and humans will see him. But at the breaking-up of the body and the exhaustion of the life-span, devas and humans will see him no more.
    — Brahmajāla Sutta
Hello Bhante,

I think 'hallucination' might be a bit harsh. Even if the images were produced by the mind alone, it was a highly purified mind that produced them. If Ajahn Mun really did attain the Deathless, then could he have had a vision of things beyond the limitations of time and space, perhaps? Beyond the limitations of 'then' and 'now', beyond the conception of time as linear?

:anjali:
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BlackBird
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by BlackBird »

tiltbillings wrote:
kirk5a wrote:
Dhammanando wrote:Like the cardinal with his ‘special revelations’, Ajahn Maha Bua could justify virtually anything simply by claiming that it had been directly revealed to Ajahn Mun by the Buddha himself.
What, exactly, did Ajahn Maha Bua actually justify in this way?
The interesting thing about Maha Bua's biography of Ajahn Mun is that other students of Ajahn Mun strongly disagreed with the portrayal of Ajan Mun by Maha Bua. Sadly, it is Maha Bua's biography with which we are stuck. What is interesting about the biography is that in it we can see how the Mahayana, in it religious splendor, arose.
This is a very good point, among other very good points that have been made in this thread not the least of which was Venerable. Dhammanando's posts.

As much as people may like Ven. Maha Boowa's account, one cannot deny the fact that he has included a number of stories that contradict the word of the Buddha. That is simply a fact. What conclusions one decides to draw from that is another thing entirely.

But what I don't like is that people read Ven. Maha Boowa's account, and assume they know Venerable Mun well enough to make categorical calls the likes of which we have seen a taste of above e.g. 'he was a highly purified mind' - You weren't there, so how can you say with any degree of clarity what the nature of a monk who died over half a century ago was. In response to Manas' post later in this thread, I think the same applies in reverse - If you weren't there you can't go around saying oh Ajahn Mun was deluded either.

To often people conflate their faith with fact, and speak with an assurance that is not deserved. For instance I believe Ven. Nyanavira & Ven. Bodhesako to be Ariyans, but I don't know that to be true. I have faith that it is so, just like Christians have faith in Jesus. But the Bible is not proof of God any more than Maha Boowa's account of eternal Buddha's and arahants descending from Nibbana to visit Ajahn Mun and congratulate him on his quite public arahantship is proof of such things being real.

metta
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Last edited by BlackBird on Fri Dec 06, 2013 9:35 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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'The Blessed One is the Teacher, I am a disciple. He is the one who knows, not I." - MN. 70 Kitagiri Sutta

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Dhammanando
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by Dhammanando »

manas wrote:I think 'hallucination' might be a bit harsh.
"Devas and humans will see him no more."
Ajahn Mun was a human.
Therefore Ajahn Mun will see him no more.


Yet Ajahn Mun did see him, so it is claimed. Assuming that the reported experience did not occur in a dream but in the ajahn’s waking hours, then we can call it an apparitional experience. But since Ajahn Mun (as reported by Ajahn Maha Bua) did not take it as an apparition, but really believed that Gotama Buddha and his disciples were coming to pay him a courtesy call, it was an apparition that deceived him. And that, by definition, would be an hallucination.

  • Hallucination: (n) an experience involving the apparent perception of something not present.
If Ajahn Mun really did attain the Deathless, then could he have had a vision of things beyond the limitations of time and space, perhaps? Beyond the limitations of 'then' and 'now', beyond the conception of time as linear?
I don’t think we need attribute the ajahn’s experience to anything so exotic. If one were to live as Ajahn Mun did — dwelling in a lonely place, fasting for days on end, and devoting all of one’s waking hours to the recitation of a mantra, and all of this unguided by any teacher and informed by only the meagrest acquaintance with the Buddha’s teaching, I think it would be rather remarkable if one did not end up having some bizarre mental experiences.

Now I don’t know whether or not a real arahant could have visions of the kind attributed to Ajahn Mun, though it doesn’t seem entirely unlikely, for example, as a consequence of the kind of neural damage that gives rise to peduncular hallucinosis:
  • Unlike some other kinds of hallucinations, those that patients with PH experience are very realistic, and often involve people and environments that are familiar to the affected individuals. Because the content of the hallucinations is never exceptionally bizarre, patients can rarely distinguish between the hallucinations and reality.
But what I think we can be confident of is that an arahant, through his destruction of the akusala root of delusion, would be beyond the possibility of being deceived by any apparitional or visionary experience that he may undergo.
Rūpehi bhikkhave arūpā santatarā.
Arūpehi nirodho santataro ti.


“Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realms.
Cessation is more peaceful than the formless realms.”
(Santatarasutta, Iti 73)
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Dhammanando
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by Dhammanando »

kirk5a wrote:What, exactly, did Ajahn Maha Bua actually justify in this way?
Whatever the ajahn taught that was unsupported in the texts would be attributed either to what he claimed to have personally discovered through his practice or what had been made known to Ajahn Mun during the visits paid to him by past Buddhas and their arahant disciples. The things that he justified by the latter means, when considered individually, will no doubt appear to most people as trifling and innocuous, perhaps even amusing. The general thrust, however, was not so, for it served to justify and promote: (1) an ugly nationalism (wherever there’s a difference between Thai Buddhist practice and that of other Buddhist countries, it’s the Thais who are doing it the Buddha’s way); (2) support of far-right authoritarian government (as a consequence of that nationalism); (3) nikāya chauvinism (wherever Dhammayutt and Mahanikaya practice differ, it’s the Dhammayutts who are doing it the Buddha’s way); and (4) exaltation of self (wherever practice in Maha Bua’s wat differs from that of other wats in the Thai forest tradition, it’s he who is doing it the Buddha’s way).
Rūpehi bhikkhave arūpā santatarā.
Arūpehi nirodho santataro ti.


“Bhikkhus, the formless is more peaceful than the form realms.
Cessation is more peaceful than the formless realms.”
(Santatarasutta, Iti 73)
SarathW
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by SarathW »

robertk wrote:yes he lived an austere life and respected the Vinaya (although enjoyed smoking ).
I am just trying to imagine Buddha enjoying his smoke and talking about Anatta.
I unerstand that monk has to reflect on food they consumed etc.
I wonder how a monk reflect on smoking!
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by lyndon taylor »

Hindsight is 20/20. So now we are condemning respected monks for smoking in the 50s when most people smoked and it wasn't even yet perceived as bad for your health, maybe we should be ridiculing him for not having a cellphone and computer like our modern venerables.......
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kirk5a
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by kirk5a »

Dhammanando wrote:
kirk5a wrote:What, exactly, did Ajahn Maha Bua actually justify in this way?
Whatever the ajahn taught that was unsupported in the texts would be attributed either to what he claimed to have personally discovered through his practice or what had been made known to Ajahn Mun during the visits paid to him by past Buddhas and their arahant disciples. The things that he justified by the latter means, when considered individually, will no doubt appear to most people as trifling and innocuous, perhaps even amusing. The general thrust, however, was not so, for it served to justify and promote: (1) an ugly nationalism (wherever there’s a difference between Thai Buddhist practice and that of other Buddhist countries, it’s the Thais who are doing it the Buddha’s way); (2) support of far-right authoritarian government (as a consequence of that nationalism); (3) nikāya chauvinism (wherever Dhammayutt and Mahanikaya practice differ, it’s the Dhammayutts who are doing it the Buddha’s way); and (4) exaltation of self (wherever practice in Maha Bua’s wat differs from that of other wats in the Thai forest tradition, it’s he who is doing it the Buddha’s way).
Such a broad pattern ought to have publicly available information which would clearly show this. I would be interested to see an example of two of this.
"When one thing is practiced & pursued, ignorance is abandoned, clear knowing arises, the conceit 'I am' is abandoned, latent tendencies are uprooted, fetters are abandoned. Which one thing? Mindfulness immersed in the body." -AN 1.230
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mikenz66
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by mikenz66 »

Hi Kirk,

Regarding:
(2) support of far-right authoritarian government (as a consequence of that nationalism);
I presume Bhante is referring to such statements as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajahn_Maha ... Shinawatra

:anjali:
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manas
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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by manas »

It just occurred to me that, maybe we ought to be careful not to level any accusations of having been deluded at Ajahn Mun, and instead only question the veracity of the biography. I think we had better be careful with our speech here.

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Re: Buddha talked to Acharn Mun?

Post by mikenz66 »

manas wrote:It just occurred to me that, maybe we ought to be careful not to level any accusations of having been deluded at Ajahn Mun, and instead only question the veracity of the biography. I think we had better be careful with our speech here.
That's a good point.

One of the problems I see with forming any attitude towards figures like Ajahn Mun is that their fame, and our knowledge about them, rests on second-hand (or worse) stories, translated from other languages. We don't have access to primary sources, or any source of coherent explanation of their teachings, for that matter.

Such figures can be helpful inspiration, but since it's the stories and hagiographies that create the interest/inspiration, it is hard to be sure what exactly they taught. Perhaps it's best not to worry...

:anjali:
Mike
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