As Saahera Ashraf scrolled through Instagram, she stopped on an elderly East Asian monk in a saffron robe. Yang Mun sat before the camera, offering his followers a lesson on forgiveness.
They needed to forgive four groups of people, he told them: their parents, former partners, people who had hurt them and, finally, themselves. Ashraf listened. Hundreds of videos like it were posted on Mun’s page, offering advice about relationships, anxiety, eating habits, and quieting an overactive mind, often from a softly lit temple or beside statues of the Buddha.
To Ashraf, 32, who lives in Toronto, Mun looked like what he claimed to be: an elderly teacher passing along lessons learned over a lifetime. “I have a couple of his posts saved,” she said.
