There is a sutta where the Buddha explains how, as a bodhisatta, he maintained a weekly (I believe) practice of sleeping out in the open or possibly in a charnel ground. Can anyone help remember what sutta this is, please?
Thank you.
CIPS > charnel ground living > gives MN12
There is also a whole https://index.readingfaithfully.org/#Bodhisatta section.
Thank you very much for those, @Snowbird, I’m pretty sure it’s not MN 12, though. I’m following the link you kindly sent, but the closest I see there at first glance in MN 4, and I don’t think it’s that one, either. (Those are well-known, and I recall it being kind of an obscure sutta.) I specifically recall that he mentions it as a regular practice, sounding like something quite close to an uposatha ritual of some sort, but I can’t be sure. These two suttas are framed within the context of austerities, which I don’t think was the context of the episode I’m thinking of.
Thank you!
Have you gone through the search results for “charnel”? https://suttacentral.net/search?query=charnel
I’m in the midst of that right now, thank you!
Is it MN 4, Bhayabherava Sutta (“Fear and Dread”)?
The Buddha recalls his pre-awakening practice:
He goes on the 8th, 14th, and 15th nights of the lunar fortnight to particularly frightening places — park, forest, and tree shrines; to encounter fear and overcome it without changing posture.
You know, I thought it wasn’t MN 4, and that’s what I told @Snowbird, but, after looking here and there and finding nothing, I’m going acquiesce and say that it probably is MN 4. Thank you, @Dogen.
I don’t know if there are some sort of badges for this, but I’m going give the solution to @Snowbird since she answered first.
My apologies, @Dogen. 
I know this topic’s already closed, but I just wanted to circle back around and thank both of you for your contributions and let you know that this was more than an academic interest.
My family and I live on the semi-rural outskirts of a small city here in Japan, and, on uposatha days, when we have the opportunity, with our bellies properly empty, I like to take them walking up the mountain behind our house to sit for maybe a half-hour or so after dark. It also used to be a part of my own practice to spend the night in the wild after sending them back home, though it had been a few years since I had stayed out. But I would always sleep poorly, feeling exactly the same fear the Bhagava alludes to in MN 4:
Tattha ca me, brāhmaṇa, viharato mago vā āgacchati, moro vā kaṭṭhaṁ pāteti, vāto vā paṇṇakasaṭaṁ ereti; tassa mayhaṁ brāhmaṇa etadahosi: ‘etaṁ nūna taṁ bhayabheravaṁ āgacchatī’ti.
And while I dwelt there, a wild animal would come up to me, or a peacock would knock off a branch, or the wind would rustle the leaves. I thought: ‘What now if this is the fear and dread coming?’
(We have racoons, badgers, deer, and wild boar on our mountain who are not at all averse to coming up and introducing themselves.)
Last week, though, after a short but pleasant sit, I walked them back home and went back out to a small, abandoned roadside shrine armed with a wooden pillow and an old cīvara my ajahn gave me many years ago. Anyway, long story short, after a fitful hour or so, I relaxed into the best sleep I’ve had in years, in the home or out. And I immediately felt an inexpressible but no less palpable internal change, which I now recognize to be a small measure of the parisuddhakāyakammanta mentioned, again in MN 4. (See also SN 22.101.)
So, your connecting me with that sutta last week helped bring some important paccavekkhana and ñāṇadassanā to the experience for me, and I wanted to say, “Thanks.”