About This Teaching
At the start of this session, Ajahn Dtun recalls wanting to know which meditation object suited him best. On his walking path, a skeleton arose in his mind unbidden, then a dried corpse, then two mud-covered corpses of a man and a woman. Wanting certainty, he made a determination: if this were to be his final life, a sign should appear during the Pāṭimokkha recitation an hour later. Kneeling as the chanting began, he saw pus streaming from his whole body three times, so vividly he opened his eyes to check the floor.
He links this to adhiṭṭhāna, the perfection of resolution, while stressing that any outcome still depended on continued practice. In questions afterwards he explains that not everyone needs visions. Some practitioners simply contemplate death, the body parts or the elements until the mind truly believes the body is not self. He describes a friend who sat before the dried body of a dead monk in a glass case until an image arose. If fear comes, he says, open one's eyes.
He adds that he rarely shares this history, and does so only to inspire practice.