About This Teaching
A few months after ordaining, Ajahn Dtun was spending the rains at a branch monastery under one of Ajahn Chah's disciples. Practising sitting and walking at least nine hours a day, with mindfulness unbroken, he began seeing monks, villagers, chickens and buffaloes as corpses and skeletons in stages of decay.
On one alms round the village looked deserted. Back at the monastery the walls seemed to crumble, the sandy path appeared overgrown with moss, the forest looked dead and his hut was hung with cobwebs. He likens it to a second photo superimposed on every living thing. He even told himself not to come unhinged, though concentration stayed firm. After a day and a half, things returned to normal.
With a small doubt remaining, he wrote to his father asking him to take a letter to Ajahn Chah. Before any reply came, he was sweeping his veranda when the whole episode replayed in his mind. Then a statement arose: whatever is of a nature to arise is of a nature to cease. He says he knew then what Venerable Koṇḍañña had realised.