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| Book Review: "Venerable Acariya Mun Bhuridatta Thera: A Spiritual Biography" | ||
| 作者 | Mettam, Michael |
|---|---|
| 出處題名 | The Middle Way: Journal of the Buddhist Society |
| 卷期 | v.78 n.4 |
| 出版日期 | 2004.02 |
| 頁次 | 241 - 244 |
| 出版者 | The Buddhist Society |
| 出版者網址 | http://www.thebuddhistsociety.org/ |
| 出版地 | London, England, UK [倫敦, 英格蘭, 英國] |
| 資料類型 | 期刊論文=Journal Article; 書評=Book Review |
| 使用語言 | 英文=English |
| 摘要 | VENERABLE ACARIYA MUN BHURIDATTA THERA: A Spiritual Biography, by Acariya Maha Boowa Ñanasampanno, translated from the Thai by Bhikkhu Dick Silaratano. Produced in 2003, for free distribution only, by Wat Pa Baan Taad Udorn Thani 41000 Thailand. Copies available at Gaia House, West Ogwell, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 6EN by sending a donation to cover a 34×24 cm. padded envelope and ￡2.24 postage. Copies also available at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, Great Gaddesden, Hemel Hempstead, Herts HPI 3BZ. The teaching of Acariya Mun was first encountered in the West during brief visits to England in the 1970s by two of his greatest disciples, the Thai masters Acariya Maha Boowa and Acariya Chah. Its spiritual theme is that Enlightenment (sambodhi), which is the arrival at understanding of final truth (añña) or freedom of the heart (vimutta citta), is attainable in our day and that it is the highest aim possible for us and incumbent on us as human beings to achieve. This majestic idea had already been planted in the West with the setting up of the Pali Text Society in 1881 and the gradual translation into English of the Buddhist works known as the Pali Canon. With their publication the Dhamma as expressed in the extensive early teachings of the Buddha arrived on our shores. (I speak here as a Theravadin. Mahayana Buddhism had its own important routes.) In the twentieth century, the influence of several notable Asian meditation teachers also spread gradually to the West. A look at the Buddhist picture now in the West suggests that we have grown accustomed to the Dhamma and are in need of a good shaking up. We are comfortable about it. Lay Buddhists, including lay scholars, are cushioned by comfort to an extent not shared by Buddhist monks and nuns, who live by the discipline imposed by the monastic rules, the Vinaya. And in the mental climate of Buddhism in the West the astounding breakthrough to truth exemplified and taught by the Buddha and his arahant disciples -- the direct contact with the spiritual stream from the transcendence known as the Dhamma -- is regarded as something that happened a very long time ago. It was a peak time which we can revere and learn from but it hardly applies in its most extreme form to the present day. However, the teachings of the Venerable Acariya Mun and his followers specifically assert that fulfilment of the Dhamma, the final breakthrough to truth and understanding, is attainable now, in the present. Attainable -- but how difficult! The mountains of difficulty that have to be overcome vary, not in their arduousness but in their setting, for people of different lives, different backgrounds. The particular setting of Acariya Mun can be taken as a metaphor for the journey that each aspirant faces. Acariya Mun and his followers (including acariyas Boowa and Chah) followed the discipline of the dhutanga bhikkhus, a form of severe asceticism that is allowed in the Pali Canon for some types of character. The forest tradition as it is described in this book is rigorous in the extreme. There are accounts of bhikkhus meditating within a few feet of the most fearsome of all beasts, tigers, and of how their ferocity was soothed by stillness and metta; of the heightened concentration and awareness of meditation practised on the edge of a precipice; of the cold and rain encountered in the unprotected open-air life; of the poverty of the villages they wandered through in northern Thailand, northern Burma or Laos, where a few spoonfuls of rice were often all that could be spared by villagers for the daily almsround; of the little sleep; of the constant moving on so as not to be a burden on the poor. The extraordinary lifestyle followed by the dhutanga bhikkhus could hardly be more remote from us in its particular details, but the courage and grandeur of their simple acceptance and unremitting effort speaks directly to the heart. The account of Acariya Mun's journey towards E |
| ISSN | 00263214 (P) |
| 點閱次數 | 855 |
| 建檔日期 | 2009.09.30 |
| 更新日期 | 2020.11.04 |
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