Is Ajahn Mun's arahant story in his biography fake?

It’s completely absurd. You should read it sometime. It is, however, a perfect example of what happens when the Abhidhamma and Commentaries are not taken seriously, as they were in the Thai Forest tradition that he came from. The Thai Forest tradition started off as an extremely noble undertaking, with monks trying to actually attain nibbāna, when many had given up on this goal or thought it no longer possible. Yet we can see that within about 4 generations it became overtaken by wrong views, complete with eternalist saints and mythological stories like the one you referenced. It really didn’t take long for that to happen. Ajahn Sao started teaching Mun sometime around the 1890’s, if I am not mistaken. The biography was first published in 1971, in Thai. So within about eighty years (or 4 generations) we see this fully hypostatized.

Now, whether Mahā Boowa’s accounts of Ajahn Mun’s life and experiences are actually reflective of what Mun claimed himself, or are mostly developed by Mahā Boowa, I can’t say for certain, but we can see what happened nonetheless. Mahā Boowa also implied that he was an arahant himself—one who proclaimed public political views and who used money, and so on, which is also ridiculous, of course.

It’s not very different from what happened after the Buddha’s parinibbāna.

All the schools that did not honor the Abhidhamma fell into wrong views, and they either don’t exist anymore or were absorbed into schools with wrong views that developed much later. Only the Theravāda has remained until now (for a total of 2,500+ years, or 125+ generations). This is simply because it insulated itself from all those wrong views by its rigorous adherence to the Abhidhamma and Commentaries.

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